Friday, September 21, 2007

Theme for the month, if the committee pisses you off, join it!

In the past, I've had big issues with the way the Student Senate here at BNCC allocated money. For a while they were fully funding the Dance, Dance Revolution Club -- but would only fund debate one trip at a time. Were it not for a really astute student, who was also the president of Student Senate, my debate team would never have been moved to Academic funding and many people's lives would be different.

Recently, the Honors council made me mad when my honors ethics class didn't make and got opened up for full registration. The reason it didn't make is because I only had 80 philosophy students the previous semester, so it didn't get promoted to my normal 200-250 students per semester and nobody registered for it. Their attempts at communicating with students have been really pathetic and were no help at all.

So, what have I done in the last week? I joined BOTH committees. It seems pretty counter-intuitive, until you realize that I think both committees do important work and I think I have ideas that could make some real changes in the programs the committees support.

So, on top of four sections this semester and 150 students... I am:
department chair.
mentoring two embedded tutors
on Student Life
on Honors Committee
taking curriculum revisions to the infamously hard committee.
working on a dissertation / conference presentation
going to see my honey-pie in Red State....

This year I have two challenges...
1) Resist taking over honors. Really, it is tempting for me, but I don't want that.
2) Don't let any other committees make me mad.

do you think that's enough??

2 comments:

timna said...

I suspect Honors is ripe for the picking...

Inside the Philosophy Factory said...

Sadly, it seems to be -- but I need to keep my hands in my pockets!