End of Week 1

When I said to another faculty member that it was the end of the first week, the response was "only thirteen weeks to go". While that is true, the statement also feels somewhat negative to me. However I have not been teaching in this system for very long compared to many of the faculty.

As yet I have not experienced any of the routine rudeness I remember from the Fall semester last year. That is a good thing. I hope this continues. Perhaps last year was an anomaly? Perhaps last year I had lower tolerance for inappropriate behaviour? This Fall the inappropriate behaviour has come from college employees. The all faculty startup meeting was announced to be in a completely inappropriate location: a student pub. And it turns out to have been a bad choice as a meeting room. There were not enough seats. The pub equipment (coolers, ice makers, telephones, etc.) was all left running and made various noises throughout the meeting. The A-V system was not adequate. And sight lines were not good from parts of the room.

On Wednesday I received a package of information from the Faculty Professional Development Office thanking me for agreeing to do a particular task. While I am happy to do the work, I would have liked to have agreed to do it beforehand. I expect this kind of behaviour will continue through the semester and probably for many years to come.

It seems to me this kind of behaviour, along with other events that I have heard about but not experienced directly, is an indicator of a change of corporate culture. It seems to me people at the top of the organization are now operating as if the college is a large institution. Unfortunately it seems no one thought to talk about the change in corporate culture with the long term faculty, and probably also not with the long term support staff either. So many long term employees do or will feel the organization is not the same organization as it used to be. That is true. Unfortunately many long term employees will feel they do not want to work in this "new" organization (what they mean is they do not like the new corporate culture). So they will either leave as soon as they can, or they will not work the way they used to. These changes in personnel or in the way people work will accelerate the change in culture.