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.
23 March 2011
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.
18 February 2011
Are Professors Really like Chefs?
One of the school-wide faculty governance committees that I sit on has more students attending than faculty. Student input and insights are good to have. But, this committee is the curriculum committee. The committee that reviews new courses, reviews new and revised degree program proposals, makes suggestions for improving curriculum and reviewing the evaluation of courses. Given this list of responsibilities, having so many students has always seemed out of balance to me. But, when I bring it up, no, we need student involvement. Sure, but this is a FACULTY governance committee.
At the last meeting, the last agenda item was "course evaluations." Things got weird. The students started telling horror stories about this course and that course and how the current course evaluation forms don't permit them to describe the problems. Okay, we can fix the form. Then, the conversation turned to students wanting to know which courses are good. They want to see each others evaluations of a course. Here, I started to get queasy. I've seen how a class of student can gang up on a professor and turn the evaluations really sour. This experience and possibility wasn't holding any sway with this group of students.
Next a student said that he thought there ought to be transparency in the course evaluations. Okay. There ought to be 360 degree feedback. I see a huge problem with this because faculty, especially tenured faculty, have no vested interest beyond the non-existent cost of living raise and ego to do good teaching. This went over the heads of the students. He went on to say that if he is going to a resturant he wants to see how others have rated the chef and the service.
What?! Comparing faculty teaching and choosing classes to choosing a restaurant! Needless to say, I went ballistic.These millennial students have such a profoundly different world view. From his point of view, he was buying my service. Never mind that the portion of my salary that actually comes from tuition is probably somewhere between 0% and 10%. I don't call that buying my service.
It's a hard sell. They want to be entertained. I suspect they also want to feel like they are getting their money's worth. But, how can they really know if that's the case? What criteria do they have as a guide? They have grown up relying on the opinions of others as a frame of reference for their own assessments. How can they have enough knowledge of a topic before and while taking a course to know if they are receiving the right information? They can't; they can only know that the professor is funny and smart and makes them feel good about their work.
I dread the continuation of this agenda item. I dread the distance between the generations. I dread the gap in understanding the context of teaching and of learning. I dread the lack of a one best path to make us all happy. I dread the continuation of this agenda item.
At the last meeting, the last agenda item was "course evaluations." Things got weird. The students started telling horror stories about this course and that course and how the current course evaluation forms don't permit them to describe the problems. Okay, we can fix the form. Then, the conversation turned to students wanting to know which courses are good. They want to see each others evaluations of a course. Here, I started to get queasy. I've seen how a class of student can gang up on a professor and turn the evaluations really sour. This experience and possibility wasn't holding any sway with this group of students.
Next a student said that he thought there ought to be transparency in the course evaluations. Okay. There ought to be 360 degree feedback. I see a huge problem with this because faculty, especially tenured faculty, have no vested interest beyond the non-existent cost of living raise and ego to do good teaching. This went over the heads of the students. He went on to say that if he is going to a resturant he wants to see how others have rated the chef and the service.
What?! Comparing faculty teaching and choosing classes to choosing a restaurant! Needless to say, I went ballistic.These millennial students have such a profoundly different world view. From his point of view, he was buying my service. Never mind that the portion of my salary that actually comes from tuition is probably somewhere between 0% and 10%. I don't call that buying my service.
It's a hard sell. They want to be entertained. I suspect they also want to feel like they are getting their money's worth. But, how can they really know if that's the case? What criteria do they have as a guide? They have grown up relying on the opinions of others as a frame of reference for their own assessments. How can they have enough knowledge of a topic before and while taking a course to know if they are receiving the right information? They can't; they can only know that the professor is funny and smart and makes them feel good about their work.
I dread the continuation of this agenda item. I dread the distance between the generations. I dread the gap in understanding the context of teaching and of learning. I dread the lack of a one best path to make us all happy. I dread the continuation of this agenda item.
09 February 2011
Blurry week
This past week I've been ill with a a bad cold. Thankfully, I didn't have many appointments and no classes. So, I slept through the Chicago Blizzard of 2011 and was too ill to shovel the 2 feet of snow. But, I live in a great neighborhood, and my neighbors were out shoveling for each other. What a blessing! So, public health as a lived experience.
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