Book discussion

Remember when I wrote about being assigned to read a book by the Provost called What the Best College Teachers Doby Ken Bain?  Well, we had the book discussion last Thursday (2.19.09) night.  And let me tell you, it was awesome.  We had a nice dinner, including wine, and it was a total of about 18 junior faculty from all different departments having a meaningful discussion about their challenges with teaching.  Initially I was anxious about how many were going to show up.  I thought if it was only me and the moderator we wouldn’t have a very good discussion, but once I got there by anxiety was quickly alleviated.

The discussion began with  a couple deans and my director showing up to say hello and lend their support, but they did not stay.  The Provost spoke for a couple minutes but did not stay, making it clear he did not want to hinder the conversation with his presence.  Then the president came in and said he was staying for dinner and would sit in on the conversation for a while.  This made several people uncomfortable because they didn’t feel they could speak as frankly as they would like, but it didn’t phase me in the least, he never said a word, just listened and I thought that he did that was significant.  As for the conversation . . . . I was just glad to be there and have the opportunity to hear what some of the teaching faculty’s legitimate concerns were:

• taking attendance, yes or no and why or why not
• getting students to do the assigned readings
• crafting meaningful assignments that incorporate the readings in order to get them to do the reading
• student participation in class
• the challenges associated with being a non-male and/or non-white faculty member and how students treat you, how the dynamics change in student/teacher interaction
• the challenges of having to spend so much time mentoring students and not just teaching and doing research
• dealing with and responding to students that treat school like another consumer driven service, for example, what do you say to a student that asks if you can cut down on the assigned readings because there is clearly overlap between some of them?
• addressing the issues associated with meeting the educational needs of students with a typically high failure rate
• the economy, what is going on with deans leaving at this juncture, and are our jobs safe?
• is there a place where we can meet casually on a regular basis, like a faculty lounge?

And these are only the things I can remember, there certainly were many other things brought up.  I tried to put in my two cents near the end but didn’t feel I really had much to contribute, but told them I felt blessed to even have a place at the table and remind them that the library is here to serve them.  I hope to be able to participate, even if it is just listening, in many more conversations like this.  It was very enjoyable and I have a lot to learn from these people.  And my hope is that some day I will have something to contribute.

As for the book . . . the general consensus was that it was good but it pretty much made folks feel like failures as teachers and that they could never measure up to the faculty that were included in the study.  Beyond that the book really wasn’t the focus of the discussion, but it certainly was a good jumping off point.

The only downside was that the whole event reminded me again of the inequality of teaching faculty and library faculty on campuses.  But that, as I have said before, is a topic for another time . . .

Monday in all it’s glory . . . whew!

So I spent the morning hunting rouge staplers during my Reference Desk shift, seeing how behind I’m with interlibrary loan stuff, emailing about ACRL national events and a developing poster, sifting through over 200 emails (I know for some that is not a lot . . .), and getting dragged into a workshop in assistive technologies that I had no intention of attending.  Granted, I did learn some things in the workshop and am glad I went, but I am so overwhelmed at this moment in the day and am not sure what to work on.  So, I decided to submit this blog post as a way for me to take stock before I finish my afternoon. 

Before I go, let me just say this.  The junior faculty in the library, of which I am one, have formed a support group to help each other work through our tenure projects.  I just found out that the Provost is looking to meet with various groups on campus to discuss campus-wide concerns and our director thought it might be useful for our group to sit down with him.  Not sure when it will happen at this point but it is an exciting idea, to be able to speak to the Provost about library concerns and how we fit within and work with the rest of the campus.  I’m really looking forward to that meeting.

College of Santa Fe?

Just heard that the College of Santa Fe is in serious financial straights.  They know they will be able to complete the Spring semester, but are uncertain of their future beyond that.  I certainly won’t make any declarations or assumptions here about what is going to happen to the college.  Suffice it to say, let us all hope that their difficulties will be worked out by the time the Fall semester comes around.  I’m sure everyone at the College of Santa Fe; students, staff, faculty and administration, want to continue their work in higher education.

Full-semester Swing

Spent yesterday grading papers in the morning, having a lunch meeting about an upcoming poster two colleagues and I are presenting at ACRL National in March, the afternoon trying to catch up on some interlibrary loan requests, the early evening at a two hour college Senate meeting, and the evening at home grading more papers and drafting some notes for a meeting I had this morning.

Today so far has been following up on some stuff on the graded papers, putting my volunteer and work-study student to work on interlibrary loan stuff, having a 10:30 meeting (short as we expected, but we got off topic a bit to discuss some instruction issues we are having, all good though), discovering after the meeting that OCLC WorldCat Resource Sharing is offline until at least 3 and trying to scrape together more for my volunteer and work-study student to do that didn’t involve the computer, 20 mintues or so discussing instruction issues with another colleague, lunch with same colleague and doing some much needed instruction venting, back to the office this afternoon to ACRL poster work, emailing and hoping OCLC is back on line.  Decide to submit a blog post in the interim.  While discussing internal issues with colleagues around 3 pm I discover OCLC will not be available until at least 6pm.  Maybe I should just go home.  But wait, I have a letter to draft and a class to prepare for tomorrow . . . what now????

Please let OCLC be working tomorrow.

P.S. Just did spellcheck in WordPress and the word “blog” is not in their vocabulary . . . heh?

I’ve been tagged a girl

So I was down in the stacks two weeks ago for my first “Stacks Reference” shift and my colleague and a student came down to get some senior projects  from the senior projects room. (Our students all do a senior project as part of the requirements for graduation and we bind and keep copies of them here at the library.)  My colleague was having trouble with the key and asked if I could help.  As we were walking back to the room the student asked me if I wanted to know what the students call me.  With a bit of hesitation, somewhat fearful I had gained some horrible/stereotypical nickname, I said yes.  He said: “Interlibrary Loan Girl.”  Whew!  I responded: “Well, at least it isn’t ‘Interlibrary Loan Lady.’”  Kind of funny really.  Give people a chance and they will tag/categorize/label/name you in a way that makes sense to them.

Blindsided by strategic planning

Sorry folks, I haven’t been posting lately as I am a bit at a loss for words.  I attended an all day strategic planning workshop prior to the beginning of the semester and fell into a cloud of disillusionment .  I know, strategic planning is not easy, but this all day workshop seemed extremely unproductive.  I’m hoping that the folks who ran it thought otherwise.  I won’t go into details but the Provost opened the day asking everyone to listen and the day ended with many of the same complaints that often echo across the campus and no one seeming to listen at all.  And it isn’t like I haven’t experienced strategic planning before, my last institution went through it when I was there.  That process I found interesting and inspiring, albeit a lot of hard work.  But this workshop was just painful, probably in large part because it brought to the fore again how little the teaching faculty are really interested in what faculty librarians have to say about anything.  Although, that is a topic for much discussion outside a post on strategic planning.  I felt very frustrated and invisible by the end of that day and am still recovering.  However, I will admit, what I heard was somewhat enlightening about how people see the campus and what they believe they are trying to accomplish here.  Does that make me noble or a better person because I did a lot of listening as instructed and others did not?  Absolutely not.  If anything I am merely confused.   The only conclusion I can come to from that day is that I have much more listening to do and a lot more to learn.  Two years is barely enough time to even begin to understand the intricacies of what is going on on a college campus.

Meanwhile, the semester is in full swing here and I am as busy as ever not having enough time to do anything as well, or as complete, as I would like, but soldiering on nonetheless.