{"id":183,"date":"2003-08-16T08:47:00","date_gmt":"2003-08-16T12:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=183"},"modified":"2003-08-16T08:47:00","modified_gmt":"2003-08-16T12:47:00","slug":"getting-ready-for-the-semester-and-a-surprising-invitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=183","title":{"rendered":"Getting ready for the semester, and a surprising invitation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been delinquent on this work journal, I know.  We\u2019ll see if I can be more disciplined this semester, but my <em>3.14159&#8230;<\/em> loyal readers will understand that other things have priority.  Right now, I\u2019m working on my pre-semester to-do list.  Syllabi are (mostly) redrafted.  I\u2019m slowly working on quizzes for the undergraduate class (more of that later in this entry).  I\u2019ve checked on the books I ordered.  I\u2019m mostly ready to go, at least for the first week.  New wrinkles this term:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>On-line quizzes for undergraduate class.  In prior semesters, I\u2019ve had weekly in-class, short-answer quizzes.  These have been useful for keeping students motivated to read the material every week.  They are also very time-consuming for me.  So I\u2019m trying on-line quizzes to serve the same function.  Yes, they\u2019re standardized, but they\u2019re low-stakes, and an additional wrinkle may help me in assessing student reading.\n<li>Using an online journal system for the graduate class, albeit for comments on readings.  My favorite academic toy right now is the <a href=\u201chttp:\/\/www.pkp.ubc.ca\/ojs\/\u201d>Open Journal Systems<\/a> open-source software, which allows a journal editor to use software to do the most tedious aspects of running a journal&#151;assigning reviewers, sending out routine correspondence, routing the MS\u2019s, and so forth.  I\u2019ve used it as back-end support for the H-Education book reviews, to manage the reviewing pool, and now I can think of another use:  to organize a class peer-reviewing process.  So each week, students will write comments on the upcoming week\u2019s reading and then respond to two classmates\u2019 comments on the prior week\u2019s readings.  The latter assignment will also allow students to provide comments after class discussion.\n<li>A style guide I\u2019m still in the midst of writing.  Inspired by reading Stephen Pinker and Joseph M. WIlliams this summer,  I\u2019m trying to finish the style tutorial I had slated for writing a few years ago (to match my plagiarism tutorial).  It\u2019s a lower priority, I know, and may not be finished until the end of the term.\n<\/ul>\n<h4>And now for something a bit surprising&#8230;<\/h4>\n<p>Yesterday, I received the following e-mail from the secretary to my dean:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dr. Dorn, I am pleased to inform you that you have been nominated for the position of Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development.  If you accept this nomination, please send a one-page letter indicating your interest and a current copy of your vita to me no later than Friday, September 12.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Kennedy encourages your application.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The position is an interesting one, combining research compliance (making sure all faculty follow ethical and financial rules for grants and contracts), research encouragement (herding cats to write grant proposals), and personnel issues (tenure, promotion, grievances, recruitment, retention, etc.).  I have no idea who nominated me for the position, but it\u2019s a bit odd.  I\u2019m an associate professor, so my involvement in decisions on promotion to full professor would endanger their credibility (and possibly earn me some enemies on that score when it\u2019s my own promotion at risk in a few years).  I also have no administrative experience, and I\u2019d instantly leap to a senior administrative post in the college, with personnel responsibilities (when I\u2019ve never even been on my department\u2019s annual review committee).  And it would be a huge investment of time, not only in doing the job but in the steep learning curve.  It would reduce my commitment to my own research and teaching, and it would be more time away from my family.  And I\u2019ve committed myself to be the treasurer of the local faculty union chapter through April.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I love being an academic matchmaker (which would be one part of the job), and I have a number of ideas on that score.  I\u2019m reasonably competent at cutting or at least coping with red tape (the research compliance piece).  And I can (or will be able to) write evaluations and be part of personnel decisions, if with considerable time spent in learning that part of the job.  But it would be a diversion from my expected activities over the next few years, and I doubt that the college\u2019s chairs would see me as qualified.  Or, rather, I\u2019m afraid to think about a pool of candidates that would make me the <em>most<\/em> qualified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been delinquent on this work journal, I know. We\u2019ll see if I can be more disciplined this semester, but my 3.14159&#8230; loyal readers will understand that other things have priority. Right now, I\u2019m working on my pre-semester to-do list. Syllabi are (mostly) redrafted. I\u2019m slowly working on quizzes for the undergraduate class (more of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-2X","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}