| Week Fifteen
December 17, 2012: Inside the HEAD: Week Fifteen (day seventy-three)
As promised, today presents Part II of "Inside The HEAD's" parting words. The blog will probably continue on a weekly pace, but with faculty's grades in and the campus eerily quiet, I will wrap this diary up. Friday was a re-hash of the lowlights; today is a homage of the highlights. How do I account for those? I believe I can use three categories.
1) You say you want a resolution. Some of the blogs' laments were actually rectified in some way since written.
- C & I meetings were very crisp all fall; all changes were submitted and approved on time. Since I am not a Dean, I can count this as a highlight. They have until Dec. 21 to make officially all the catalog changes for the Registrar. Count my blessings twice that I am not the Registrar, who has to enter all those changes into the Banner system over the next month.
- The hours of operation for the next five months are set. They have been set for a week. Literally dozens and dozens of phone calls and emails were exchanged to get this right. Since I am not my admininstrative assistant, I can count this as a highlight. She keeps receiving calls from people who were included in the discussions, yet still asking when the hours were changed. Sigh. A highlight wrapped in a lowlight.
- I actually do have a mild form of sleep apnea. I will accept this as a good thing, even though it will mean wearing a funny device on my mouth and face every night. Since I am not an accreditor, I can count this as a highlight. This is one test that looks to have achieved its desired results.
2) How Sweet It Is (To Not Be You). I know this is ultimately really childish, but sometimes it is a highlight just to not be the other guy.
- A colleague alerted the other Vice Presidents of Instruction around the state about his search for a Dean of Health and Public Services. Since I am not this other guy, this is definitely a highlight. Been there, done that. More than once.
3) It's those changes in attitude, changes in latitude, but the approach isn't the same. Maybe I need to see glasses asmore half full.
- I continue to be amazingly impressed by the talents of SMC students. Our student art show of several weeks ago was packed with both people and exceptional pieces of art. Our fall performance of "The Importance of Being Earnest" was a delight, and then a week ago, our holiday concert, featuring our choirs, jazz band, full band, and several smaller groups within both vocal and band, was full of rising stars.
- One of SMC's current and most revered students dropped by the office suite recently to say goodbye to some of us. He had tears in his eyes when he told us what the place meant to him. He has served as a mentor and tutor for many current students and is off to work on his Master's degree. He tells us he would like to come back and teach once he has finished. I would welcome him in a second. He has a heart that belongs in our profession.
- I still find time to unleash some creativity while at work. Last week we filmed my spring semester instructional update video for our faculty and thanks to the, perhaps, unhinged and creative wits of my own team, we were able to elevate the silliness just a bit. I resorted to limerick writing several times to address individual faculty concerns, and even co-wrote with some dear people outside of SMC a couple of humorous pieces released nationally.
So I look back at the previous seventy-two days, and I have to say, "quit your bitching, Fleming."
December 14, 2012: Inside the HEAD: Week Fifteen (day seventy-two)
Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote that "In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply."
And, so, I begin my two-part ending blog for this HEAD diary. It started as a commitment, but it was always an experiment. On the first day of classes, I sought to represent the "cyclical and non-cyclical" of an higher education administrator through this blog. Look carefully, though, as I never said when I would finish. I can't even remember if my intentions were to survive the semester, the academic year, or maybe even a whole calendar year.
Truth be told, I can't see myself maintaining this daily schedule, even with a glorious three-week winter break coming up in a few days. As a result, since my faculty's final grades are due by 5:00 on Monday, December 17, that will be my final night, act II of these parting shots. Have I achieved my goal of showing the daily life of your HEAD?
Act I -- Some of the lowlights that do epitomize the downtimes in the administrator's cycles:
1) "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights": Justifying Appropriations (September 10), just what every administrator needs at beginning of the semester. Uh, Inappropriations.
2) "Video Killed the Registrar": Sitting through Webinars (Septmeber 24) that last for hours and make presenters feel good. Come to think of it, this may speak beyond the virtual world.
3) "Don't Let the Server Go Down On Me": The inevitable crash of the network (September 25) and the feeling of helplessness.
4) "All the Pithy Little Courses": Doing the year long class schedule (October 9), hands down the low point of the HEAD's year. And even when done reasonably well, perhaps the low point of the student's year.
5) "Don't Teach Around Here No More": The inevitable moment when an instructor needs to be removed (October 22) or at least not offered courses for a new semester. A semester with just two or three instances of this is considered a good semester.
6) "Everyday I Right the Booklist": Trying to make sense of the textbook list (October 29), a conundrum, an oxymoron, and a contradiction rolled into one.
7) "The Next Voice You Fear": The student comment at an important campus event (November 8) that you can't avoid. It's usually not that it is horribly inappropriate, but it could appear to represent a sort of ignorance that you fear is reflected upon the entire campus.
8) "I'm Better, You Bet": The irritating snobbery of 4-year institutions toward their community college brethren (December 3), so much so that one must ask, can something that happen daily be called cyclical from an annual perspective?
However, I refuse to end this diary blog on a negative note. Monday, I will post some of the highlights this diary has shown as good things in the cycles of administrative life. I am being very strategic. This gives me all weekend to think of them.
December 13, 2012: Inside the HEAD: Week Fifteen (day seventy-one)
So, we had a party for a bunch of academics and I spent time talking with the band.
For the second year in a row, SMC hired a talented, unique duo from Nashville to play our Holiday Party: Garcia and Scott. I had heard them last year and really enjoyed them, but hadn't particularly worked my way over to talk to them. This time, while they took a break and raffles were held, I chatted with them for a few minutes.
And here is the guilty secret of tonight's blog: I would rather hang out and talk musical influences and interests for hours, then talk academics or education or even literature (if I go back to my teaching days).
I suppose this doesn't have to be a guilty secret or pleasure. It is important for everyone to have that great passion beyond their work, although that begs the question, what do Gary Scott and Dalia Garcia have passion for beyond their music? I think the reason I like talking to musicians so much is that their work seems to be their passion. However, perhaps, I am wrong. Maybe they hang out after a show and talk about great books or the excitement of higher education.
Anyway, I won their cd in the raffle, even though I had told them I was ready to buy their cd if I didn't win one. Maybe I can make it up by promoting them. Check out GarciaandScott.com. Their latest cd, which I listen to as I write, features some great harmonies, crisp production, and a wide range of styles, ranging from blues to psychedelia to gospel. "Circles" and "One Kiss" jump out for me. And Dalia adds a groovy cover design, reminiscent of Sgt. Pepper or even another duo I have enjoyed the last few years, Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, with their Under The Covers cds.
Nevertheless, Dalia and Gary, I am disappointed you weren't able to play "Train in Vain" at the party. You must explain to me why this must be.
December 12, 2012: Inside the HEAD: Week Fifteen (day seventy)
Be forewarned. Major rant ahead.
One could name any number of "standard" systems or processes embedded in higher education that speak to the very reason why we need some kind of a revolution, some complete change in the way we do business, to stay relevant. And, sadly, one of those occurs every year during what should be a peaceful time for academics, the winter holiday break.
I refer to the cattle call that is the MLA (Modern Language Association) interview process. For those who don't know, during the last few days of the first full week of January, most faculty in literature or language hop on a plane, travel to some major city (this year it is Boston), and in between attending convention sessions (and nipping out to local bars with colleagues from around the country), often participate in the barbaric ritual of a hotel room interview.
Yes, you heard me right, all of you non-academics. We interview candidates for our faculty positions (almost always tenure-track ones) in our hotel rooms. This is perceived as convenient to both interviewers and interviewees and relatively cost effective for the institutions hiring (hey, we paid for the room, we might as well use it). I still wonder what parents think when their 24 year old daughter tells them, "hey, I got an interview with State University in a hotel room in Boston." Every stereotype they must have of the leering, old professor must flash through their minds.
And because of the nature of the job market, most of the interviewees at the MLA are fresh out of graduate school. I have to believe that most people would be very disturbed that these young people are supposed to meet some 40 or 50 year old chair of a search committee in his or her hotel room. In fact, often the interviewee doesn't even know the specific hotel room until the morning of the interview.
You can imagine my consternation when I saw Inside Higher Ed today had an advice column on how to survive the MLA interview. Surely, this will be in jest, I think. And at times, I want to see the writers grinding their satirical axe while writing the piece ("Do not elbow the next person waiting for an interview. You are better than that.") However, the more I read it, the more I believe it is entirely serious. These are legitimate pieces of advice, and the fact that the column goes on as long as it does, betrays the dangerous truth under the advice: Screw up and forget that campus interview.
Now, in the interest of disclosure, I will admit that my MLA experience when finishing grad school was a nightmare, starting with the bogus MLA-fake interview arranged by my department's graduate faculty to the expense of a flight to San Francisco and a hotel room for one interview to the impersonal setting of the actual interview and my conviction that they weren't interested in me from about the fourth minute in the interview.
However, I think I am empowered to still voice my concerns because I am pretty proud to say that I ended up with a career that I would have been much happier with anyway. I had a distinguished teaching career and have served reasonably well as an administrator for well over a decade now. How many other graduate students are literally lost walking down those hotel hallways?
There are so many more ways to inexpensively screen candidates through first round interviews. Many of my favorite interviews, regardless of what side of the desk I was on, started with a phone interview. I've participated in effective phone interviews that had 6 to 8 people interview me, and I never felt like I wasn't able to connect with them or them with me in meaningful ways that served both of us in the screening process.
I guess my point is that there is nothing very modern about the Modern Language Association's interview process.
December 11, 2012: Inside the HEAD: Week Fifteen (day sixty-nine)
Between the Monday before Thanksgiving and December 21, I have had (or will have) the opportunity to attend six work-related holiday(s) parties. Is it just me, or is that insane? We go eleven months of the year with basically one other party (not counting the occasional retirement party), and it's at the beginning of the fall semester. I never thought I could be forced to say that I get partied out, but it happens during the holiday season every year. Luckily, my wife and I are basically hermits so I really don't add any non-work parties to the mix.
Several of these parties are held on campus during work hours, and I won't belittle that. People work very hard and the nice thing about academia is that even though we know it has plenty of business beyond the actual semesters of teaching, there is a kind of down time after finals that is conducive to celebrating the season with your co-workers.
But six times? I am pretty sure there is only a tiny bank of small talk that is in my head. Once I have used it all, I have no more. I suppose I could work the room at each party appropriately so that I am always talking to new people, but who wants to work that hard at a party?
And if we were to ask any of the six "hosters" of these parties (many are by department), who draws the short straw and tries to hold the Valentine's Day party, or the Memorial Day party, or the Arbor Day party? There is just no easy answer.
For the record, there is no party being hosted by my department. Last year, my first year at SMC, I worried that I wasn't participating in this party round, but no one seems to have noticed. I suspect almost everyone else is sitting back like I am, saying, "six parties? Is it me or is that insane?"
December 10, 2012: Inside the HEAD: Week Fifteen (day sixty-eight)
Florida has introduced a neat little gimmick to get rid of an unwanted problem: encouraging the general public to round up as many pythons as possible. They even have a cute website to promote it. If you are one of the three people in the country who still don't know about the python as an invasive species in Florida (bought as pets, then dumped in the wild when they become too large), you can find out more at the website. The video is a particular hoot: just a long shot of a single python slithering along, probably in a zoo.
The brilliance of this idea may come from the absolute lack of warning to the public. All of us are invited to participate in "The Python Challenge," regardless of whether we have any training of handling snakes. Hence, through this contest, Florida can rid itself of hundreds of unwanted snakes and probably dozens of unwanted good-old-boys. It has Darwin Award scenario written all over it.
So, how can academia learn from this? How can we eliminate unwanted elements of our colleges and universities, especially ones that we may have brought inside the ivory walls, and perhaps also encourage some of our least desirable humans to eliminate themselves at the same time?
In the true spirit of what can only really be a "Python Challenge," I offer the following:
"The Spanish Acquisition:" Find the faculty member who proposed the degree in Spanish Cultural Studies. Bring him to C & I and force him to answer questions about the program's enrollment (or lack therof).
"The Money Program:" Ask students to really find out which academic programs bring in the college's big money. For extra math credit, have them calculate how many students' tuition from that program are needed to pay the President's salary.
"The Upperclassman Wit of the Year:" Find the 6th year senior who is anonymously sending all the sarcastic letters to the student paper editor. Extra points if he is brought in sober.
"The Dead Parent Sketch": Find the student who brings in the dead parent to see the dean and to complain about his instructor. Extra points if you tape record the Dean saying, "Look, matey, I know a dead parent when I see one."
"Drop the Looney:" Anticipate which faculty member will have the most student drops. In case of ties, the winner is determined by whoever gets the best excuse from the faculty member ("students these days are lazy"will not count).
"Ministry of Silly Talks:" Identify the faith of the Medieval Literature Professor who walks around all days doing voices. Extra points if answer is written in Old English.
"Author Two Beds Jackson:" Identify which two co-eds the famous writer in residence is sleeping with this year. Extra points if you bring in the poetry of either coed written about famous author.
"Confuse-a-frat:" Bring that ultra-serious fraternity back to its expected high-party lifestyle. Extra points if you use a penguin to bring the frat out of its lethargy.
"Eric's Half-a B:" Find the student with a yet-unidentified grade because his/her faculty member has decided upon the most complex grading scale ever. Extra points if you can bring the student out of his stunned state with the same penguin you use in "Confuse-a-frat."
If anyone doesn't know the original Monty Python skits these contests are based upon, shame on you! Go rent Monty Python DVDs and get caught up. Go ahead, we're not going anywhere.
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