The spring graduating students have dispersed and their MPH essays can now gather dust. I had a busy couple of months, reading and editing essays, psychologically supporting students, and a little celebrating their rite of this passage. Now, I am looking beyond tomorrow to the summer. The summer schedule has a full June and a busy July, right up to the start of school.
Just when I thought I was caught up, I realized that I have six presentations and a poster between now and mid-August. Three are for the KRISP project. One is a pre-conference presentation at ACHNE, and it is finished. The poster is for the Public Health Systems and Services Research Interest Group of AcademyHealth. I now rarely accept doing a poster session, but I will be with good company of co-poster presenters. I think we will have fun. Lastly, I have two presentations at Academy of Management. Whew, the beginning of school will seem like a breeze.
I have decided to balance my grumbling about this old, increasingly dirty and technologically challenged building with positive thoughts about a donor funding the building of a new SPH building. Based on the past rates of my grumbling, we ought to find the rich, willing, generous donor in short order. We deserve much better than we have. We are open to receive and are willing to work diligently to make a new SPH building a reality before the end of this decade. There. I said it. Now, let's make it a reality.
And the other news is that I will be writing a third edition of my textbook. Yikes more work. But, oddly, happily, I have ideas for making improvements. Which is say that I am learning and teaching.
03 June 2011
10 April 2011
View from Vacation
Some vacations involve less work than others. This past week I was visiting family. But, that did not negate the need to reply to students in need of reassurance, an appointment to work out an issue, or feedback on papers due in a week. It also did not negate the need to prepare for the public health nursing training workshops that I’ll be giving this coming week. Nor did it negate the need to process manuscripts as the Editor-in-Chief. Most of all, it did not negate the anxiety about fulfilling all of those responsibilities.
I don’t think of myself as being “on call” but the reality is otherwise. I, like most of my faculty colleagues, seem to have taken to heart the implicit expectations of students that we are available 24-7. It’s our own fault for answering emails on both Saturday and Sunday. It’s our own fault for carrying a smart phone, reading and replying to their work related emails. I’m not sure how much of it is our conscious choice versus our natural adaptation to the insidious wiredness of today’s world.
Admittedly, most of us don’t mind and would rather stay on top of the work than let a mess build up. A proverb about prevention comes to mind.
23 March 2011
Spring break, coffee break
Spring break week means quieter hallways, more closed faculty office doors, and less traffic. Some faculty actually take a break from being on campus, although few actually stop working. We still answer email, work on manuscripts and prepare for the next class. For me, spring break means nothing more than fewer students in the hallway and no faculty meetings. I just can't get into the spirit of not working in the middle of the semester. After all, I am paid to work spring break.
For a few students, spring break is a time to get ahead on RA hours in anticipation of a hellish finals week. For a few other students, spring break is a time to get involved and manifest the best of the Millennial Generation characteristics ~ service and social justice. I have two students who are on a trip to Haiti with a group led by a College of Medicine faculty. They are going to do a community assessment of needs. They are paying their own expenses and taking their enthusiasm for making a difference to a place in need of energy, commitment, and enthusiasm. They represent the best of the Millennial character.
Meanwhile, back in Chicago, I struggle to decipher the meaning of clinging to the coffee cup in the classroom. Somehow, a conversation veered to the topic of coffee in the classroom. A student was complaining about the ants that immediate surround her cup. I complained about the distraction of coffee drinking while teaching. Not long ago, I mildly chastised a faculty for taking coffee and food to each of his morning classes, arguing we are not servants or restaurants. (Maybe we ARE more like chefs than I want to admit.) Why does the collective we need to bring coffee wherever we go? Does it signify informality? Addiction? Insecurity? Non-respect? Individuality? Sleep deprivation?
I'd say that I need a coffee break, but, in daily life today, that no longer exists. Demarcations between work, play, break are faded, like old white car lane lines. I have no crystal ball (only a 9 ball) to tell me the future. Thinking of the students taking their spring break to work in Haiti, I see a future that looks promising and positive, if not caffeinated.
For a few students, spring break is a time to get ahead on RA hours in anticipation of a hellish finals week. For a few other students, spring break is a time to get involved and manifest the best of the Millennial Generation characteristics ~ service and social justice. I have two students who are on a trip to Haiti with a group led by a College of Medicine faculty. They are going to do a community assessment of needs. They are paying their own expenses and taking their enthusiasm for making a difference to a place in need of energy, commitment, and enthusiasm. They represent the best of the Millennial character.
Meanwhile, back in Chicago, I struggle to decipher the meaning of clinging to the coffee cup in the classroom. Somehow, a conversation veered to the topic of coffee in the classroom. A student was complaining about the ants that immediate surround her cup. I complained about the distraction of coffee drinking while teaching. Not long ago, I mildly chastised a faculty for taking coffee and food to each of his morning classes, arguing we are not servants or restaurants. (Maybe we ARE more like chefs than I want to admit.) Why does the collective we need to bring coffee wherever we go? Does it signify informality? Addiction? Insecurity? Non-respect? Individuality? Sleep deprivation?
I'd say that I need a coffee break, but, in daily life today, that no longer exists. Demarcations between work, play, break are faded, like old white car lane lines. I have no crystal ball (only a 9 ball) to tell me the future. Thinking of the students taking their spring break to work in Haiti, I see a future that looks promising and positive, if not caffeinated.
18 March 2011
On the road, literally
Wow, the past month has whizzed past from spending hours on the freeway and days making Powerpoint presentations. For the KRISP Project (see the blog list for a link), I've been creating and then delivering weekly 2-3hour "trainings" for employees at two of the local health departments that are participating in the project. The amount of effort needed equals that for teaching a graduate course, but more intense in terms of the effort needed to meet the health department "where they are".
Our customer-focus and accommodating approach has resulted in weekly trips to deliver the trainings. The trip is 6 hours, round-trip, through two of the five Cook County collar counties, and then the cornfields of Illinois. There is no bus or train that goes were we need to be. So, I'm becoming familiar with where the highway patrol like to wait for the speeders.
We briefly covered doing community assessment via MAPP. Most of the effort has been on teaching the staff how to do quality improvement. When I wrote the grant, I had not imagined the amount of effort it would take to gain access to the public health nurses, nor did I imagine the need for so much face-to-face teaching time. I naively thought I'd just step and and things would get done. Not so. These are slow moving, if not well intending, organizations with lots of competition for their attention.
Over the past couple of weeks, overseeing and managing this project has again brought up the awareness of the timing as both a curse and a blessing. On the cursed side, I wrote the grant before the economy went bad, before the H1N1 outbreak, before the states failed to make payments to the local health departments, and before the health departments had to lay off half of the staff. How, under those conditions, can I possibly make any difference in the empowerment and valuing of public health nurses? How can I possibly meet my grant objectives? Will all these trainings really translate into improvement in health?
On the bright side, the project has been a blessing. We are able to be a compassionate sounding board and give moral support to the nursing directors. We are able to validate that the nurses are important enough to receive this special attention. We have given hope to public health nurses throughout Washington state and rekindled their enthusiasm for who they are and what they do. We have acknowledged the nurses as lifelong learners facing a strange new work landscape.
In writing the non-competing grant renewal, I did realize that we have done a lot in the past year. Naturally, I tend to see the work ahead and the gas bills staying high. But, to be honest, there's a part of me too that's renewed and rekindled.
Our customer-focus and accommodating approach has resulted in weekly trips to deliver the trainings. The trip is 6 hours, round-trip, through two of the five Cook County collar counties, and then the cornfields of Illinois. There is no bus or train that goes were we need to be. So, I'm becoming familiar with where the highway patrol like to wait for the speeders.
We briefly covered doing community assessment via MAPP. Most of the effort has been on teaching the staff how to do quality improvement. When I wrote the grant, I had not imagined the amount of effort it would take to gain access to the public health nurses, nor did I imagine the need for so much face-to-face teaching time. I naively thought I'd just step and and things would get done. Not so. These are slow moving, if not well intending, organizations with lots of competition for their attention.
Over the past couple of weeks, overseeing and managing this project has again brought up the awareness of the timing as both a curse and a blessing. On the cursed side, I wrote the grant before the economy went bad, before the H1N1 outbreak, before the states failed to make payments to the local health departments, and before the health departments had to lay off half of the staff. How, under those conditions, can I possibly make any difference in the empowerment and valuing of public health nurses? How can I possibly meet my grant objectives? Will all these trainings really translate into improvement in health?
On the bright side, the project has been a blessing. We are able to be a compassionate sounding board and give moral support to the nursing directors. We are able to validate that the nurses are important enough to receive this special attention. We have given hope to public health nurses throughout Washington state and rekindled their enthusiasm for who they are and what they do. We have acknowledged the nurses as lifelong learners facing a strange new work landscape.
In writing the non-competing grant renewal, I did realize that we have done a lot in the past year. Naturally, I tend to see the work ahead and the gas bills staying high. But, to be honest, there's a part of me too that's renewed and rekindled.
16 March 2011
Mundane is not frustration free
For those of you who really want to know what a professor does, here a list of recent mundane and routine activities.
* Spent innumerable phone calls to three persons to sort out the project budget and get coordinated for submission of the budget through the appropriate University channels.
* Spent oodles of time fussing with the budget, after I created it in Excel, to get the amounts to come out as needed. Yes, we do work backwards from a bottom line. That's a whole skill unto itself, given that quirks of calculating the indirect costs and fringe benefits.
* Wrote the renewal for the KRISP grant, finessing the finer points of objectives not met.
* Spent hours uploading the renewal files into HRSA's antiquated online grants reporting system.. Unfortunately, very few grants managers on campus know how to use it, so me and my project coordinator have become the experts.
* Directed my project director to call tech support for that online system. The answers, my friend, were basically blowing in the tiny font, several links buried.
* Emailed communications with a student and her master's paper second readers (yes, the unusual plural) to get coordinated on helping the student.
* Wrote revisions to two manuscripts which had received a "revise and resubmit" decision. Oh, the allure of publication.
* Attended faculty meetings and more faculty meetings. Mostly surprisingly good.
* Meet students at a WIC clinic in south Chicago. It was a field trip for the MCH students, so that they could see first hand what it is like and learn what is involved for pregnant women and mothers with infants to get WIC assistance.
* Skimmed or read articles in the stack of professional journals that never seems to get any smaller. If only that would happen for me with some highly valued commodity...
* Forwarded to co-authors notification of one papers and a symposium that was accepted for presentation at Academy of Management. Getting accepted for this is a medium big deal. You'll hear more about that as that meeting nears.
* Made hotel reservations for the upcoming KRISP Project and conference travel. The university system doesn't allow for making reservations (although we can purchase the plane ticket), and hotels require a credit card number to hold the room.
* Oh, and least I forget, did my Editor-in-Chief work of finding reviewers for manuscripts, accepting/rejecting submissions, and generally keeping the email communication up to date.
All in all, not glamorous, not flashy. Just mundane with a hefty dose frustration (I'll let you guess which activities). Still, I got the jobs done.
* Spent innumerable phone calls to three persons to sort out the project budget and get coordinated for submission of the budget through the appropriate University channels.
* Spent oodles of time fussing with the budget, after I created it in Excel, to get the amounts to come out as needed. Yes, we do work backwards from a bottom line. That's a whole skill unto itself, given that quirks of calculating the indirect costs and fringe benefits.
* Wrote the renewal for the KRISP grant, finessing the finer points of objectives not met.
* Spent hours uploading the renewal files into HRSA's antiquated online grants reporting system.. Unfortunately, very few grants managers on campus know how to use it, so me and my project coordinator have become the experts.
* Directed my project director to call tech support for that online system. The answers, my friend, were basically blowing in the tiny font, several links buried.
* Emailed communications with a student and her master's paper second readers (yes, the unusual plural) to get coordinated on helping the student.
* Wrote revisions to two manuscripts which had received a "revise and resubmit" decision. Oh, the allure of publication.
* Attended faculty meetings and more faculty meetings. Mostly surprisingly good.
* Meet students at a WIC clinic in south Chicago. It was a field trip for the MCH students, so that they could see first hand what it is like and learn what is involved for pregnant women and mothers with infants to get WIC assistance.
* Skimmed or read articles in the stack of professional journals that never seems to get any smaller. If only that would happen for me with some highly valued commodity...
* Forwarded to co-authors notification of one papers and a symposium that was accepted for presentation at Academy of Management. Getting accepted for this is a medium big deal. You'll hear more about that as that meeting nears.
* Made hotel reservations for the upcoming KRISP Project and conference travel. The university system doesn't allow for making reservations (although we can purchase the plane ticket), and hotels require a credit card number to hold the room.
* Oh, and least I forget, did my Editor-in-Chief work of finding reviewers for manuscripts, accepting/rejecting submissions, and generally keeping the email communication up to date.
All in all, not glamorous, not flashy. Just mundane with a hefty dose frustration (I'll let you guess which activities). Still, I got the jobs done.
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