This video TOTALLY captures the student perspective on lab!

This video TOTALLY captures the student perspective on lab!

Faculty meeting drinking game

There are days when faculty meetings make me want to drink something stronger than my usual Diet Coke (it's taken me three days to calm down from the last one!) So I'd like to propose a drinking game:

Everyone take a shot every time:
1) The philosophy professor says we need to define what we mean by (goal, learning outcome, critical thinking, whatever) before we can begin the discussion

2) The Classicist complains about how much we've gone downhill from "the good old days"

3) A minority faculty member complains about discrimination against minorities (even though s/he does it herself)

4)A departmental representative says one thing to your face in private and something different in the big meeting

5)The emeritus faculty member complains about a typo on page 1XX in the academic bulletin

6) A faculty member with children has to leave, because the daycares close at 5:30 and the cannonical meeting ending time isn't until 5:30

I'm sure there are more, but that would definitely get me drunk in the allotted time for a faculty meeting...Other suggestions?

The joys of Facebook

We're in the middle of curriculum revisions. After circulating an idea on campus (and being given a "don't talk about this" order) in the fall, the time has finally come to bring it out. It was sent to the faculty yesterday before a meeting on the same topic. I didn't get much feedback...though one person did post something fairly snide as his facebook status.

I really wanted to post something snide back. Really, aren't we adults here? Just tell me directly, instead of broadcasting to the world...

You be the teacher...

My first grade son does a weekly exercise called "You be the teacher", where they're asked to correct spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors.

I wish my students had some practice. Here is an actual e-mail sent by a student to the entire campus today:

Hello school my name is madeup name and i am sending this email out to
tell u about the kwaanza program presented by The black studies institute
it is an event where we do a tribute to kwaanza its Thursday
December 3 at 8pm everyone is welcome to come its a great event it should
be fun. Hope to se you there!!!

No location. No punctuation, the wrong its is used, and see is spelled wrong!

And students wonder why they can't get a job...

Department chair meeting

I don't drink. I bake instead.

Today's department chair meeting resulted in me making two sweet potato pecan pies, fudgy oatmeal bars, and butterscotch haystacks.

Anyone need a snack?

What students experience...

While many of these things are not true at my institution (there are no classes with over 100 students), it does reflect the student experience. So how do we respond?

I'm now named

Today I officially became a "named" professorship. While the Dean read a very nice commendation, I felt like a fake. The donor specifically designated the position as "the XXX specialist in the YYY department," which essentially makes me the *only* qualified recipient. My research is so in the weeds it's not even funny, and I have neither the desire nor time to get it back on track.

So now I'm named AND department chair. How exactly did this happen?

Gotta revise the safety rules...

one of my students caught their sweatshirt on fire in lab today. They were working with candles. He leaned over it and caught the string on fire. He managed to take it off and we stomped it out...he was a good sport about it, and other than losing the string, no harm done. Guess we better add "tuck your hoodie ties in" to the list that includes pulling back long hair!

Warm fuzzy day

I'm teaching a non-majors class this semester. It's fairly small (20ish students); 3 hours of classroom and 3 hours of lab a week.

I got a total warm fuzzy from a student at the end of lab today. He said, "one of my friends took Chemistry last year and told me how hard it was. But you've made it relevant and fun. I loved learning about radioactivity and the poisoning of the russian spy."

That'll carry me for a while...