2009 End of Vacation

Next Monday, Aug 31, is the first official day of the Fall semester for faculty. Classes start on Wednesday Sep 8. There is a meeting on Tuesday Sep 1 for all college faculty. Invitations have been issued by the Academic Vice President (as usual) and the meeting is being held in the Student Pub. I think this is an inappropriate choice of venue and have told the appropriate person of my reaction and my reasons. On Thursday Sep 3 the School in which I work will have its startup meeting hosted by our Dean.

I continue to discover times and places where people seem to have a model in their head that our college is a small, intimate place for people to get a post-secondary education. For example, the e-mail directory is listed by first name, as if I would be on a first name basis with every employee I needed to talk to during my time of employment. I have been at start-up meetings for at least three schools. They always include a time for people to talk about "good news": what I liked about the summer vacation, what happened to me since you last saw me. While this would be appropriate in a small private school, it seems to me to ignore reality.

The college where I work has about 6,000 full time day students and several times as many part time students (day school, nights, weekends, online). There are somewhere between 300 and 400 faculty and many more support staff. It is a large organization and we should treat it as a large organization. Large organizations function quite differently from small or medium organizations. The organizational structure acknowledges the size of the institution but many of the employees seem to think it is still a small, folksy kind of place where everyone knows everyone, we are all working towards the same goal, we are all happy to be working for this particular institution, its goals are our focus when we are at work.

I am excited and a little nervous about starting back, same as always. I usually don't feel as if I have settled back into the routine until the end of the second week of classes. I have not yet seen the text I am using in four out of five sections. However I know all the pieces so I am perhaps more relaxed than I was last year at this time. I do wonder about what demands I will have to face this semester other than the ones from students.