Medaille CollegeBusiness Department
Medaille Collegeother pages
overview | teaching | scholarship | career plan
this page
significant service achievements
achieving objectives |
effectiveness | changes
Attended academic, athletic and cultural events:
Commencement,
Convocation, and Honors ceremonies
all
the women's home basketball games, two away games, and the NCAA tournament game
in Cortland
all
the men's home basketball games and several away games
the
men's soccer games at the end of the season
both
the end-of-semester off-campus banquets
the
Alumni Reunion events on both Friday and Saturday
all
the Write Thing
readings in the library, events in the Campus Center, etc.
Attended Admissions events:
Open Houses
in January, February, March, and October
Athletic
Department's first annual Student Athlete
Recruitment Day in January
Accepted students dinner
in April
New student orientations
-- CONNECTION2007 -- I was the only faculty member who participated in all five
of them
Continued to serve on P&T.
Completed service on the mentoring subcommittee of the Faculty Development Committee. I volunteered to continue but was not selected.
Continued to serve on the internationalization task force which morphed into the citizenship triad task force.
Volunteered to be on other committees, specifically the Gen Ed Review Team and the freshman mentoring, but was not selected.
Participated in the Business Department's assessment efforts.
Began participating in the Humanities Department's discussion about the basic writing courses.
Had my locus of appointment changed, effective fall 2008, from the Business Department to the Humanities Department.
Continued to assist faculty who use my sever for their course webs. Uhuru Watson/DrUhuru.net received the bulk of that assistance.
Participated in the Faculty Development Committee's mentoring sub-committee's task force on program format.
Updated my portfolio and went through the Periodic Professional Review process. Began working with other faculty on their portfolios.
Attended conferences and seminars, especially on topics that can assist my teaching and service responsibilities, and presented at one conference:
International
Conference on Teaching and Learning, Niagara University (January)
NAFSA Region X Upstate NY
Update Meeting, Syracuse University (June)
presented
"Net Neutrality and Civil Liberties:
What's at stake for libraries?" to the Association of College & Research
Libraries, Western New
York / Ontario Chapter, Spring 2007 Conference, Blur and Blend: Connecting
Our Communities, Friday, May 4, Roycroft Inn, East Aurora, NY
Participated in online discussions and mailing lists on web design, information design, marketing with new media, and technology in teaching.
Wound down my participation with the state AAUP as the webmaster for nysaaup.org because the new executive director has solid webmaking skills himself.
Prepared to move to Leiden in the Netherlands from December 2007 to August 2008 while I'm on sabbatical. (My sabbatical is discussed in detail in the scholarship section of this self-evaluation.)
I believe that I attend more College-wide events on the main campus than any other faculty member. My effectiveness remains high.
This year, I was less effective than in the past. Unfortunately, committee service is not dependent solely on my initiative, so while I have not met my own standards, I am still on several important committees.
Specifically, I was not selected to two committees that I volunteered for and really wanted to be on -- the gen ed review team and freshman mentoring. In addition, over the past twenty-three years, I have been deeply involved in all the major strategic planning and accreditation efforts, but the new president did not select me for his strategic planning committee as the previous two did.
After volunteering for those two committees, I never was told why I wasn't selected. The only feedback came months later when I heard that the committees were active and I obviously wasn't included. This negative feedback has made me realize how large Medaille's faculty has become. I'm not sure whether I feel left out or bypassed. Maybe the younger folks are telling me I'm just too old. Or maybe going on sabbatical makes administrators feel as though I won't have the continuity to make my participation worthwhile. In any case, while I recognize the need for the old guard to get out of the way and provide leadership opportunities for junior faculty, I would like it noted that I am willing to provide more committee service than I am being asked to.
This year, I did very little curriculum development. The current academic administrators seem to have succeeded in punishing and breaking up the Business Department for whatever transgressions they are convinced we have committed. Even though they don't want to discuss the past, we are held accountable for their version of it.
They used the curriculum revision process to eliminate programs, concentrations, course content, and non-tenure track faculty. This also caused tenure-track faculty to move -- one to leave academia completely and the other, me, to have his locus of appointment changed. The Handbook does not address such changes, and the VPAA contends that if the Handbook doesn't explicitly prohibit something, then he is free to do it.
The upshot is that I am going to re-join the Humanities Department because the VPAA needs to eliminate faculty lines and he can make a case that if I was hired twenty-five years ago to teach composition to adults in the evening program, then I should now be able to teach it to traditional-age undergraduates. He "regrets" that I will not be able to use the expertise that I have developed with communications media.
The biggest practical difference is that I will participate in the Humanities Department's curriculum development efforts in Fall 2008.
If I measure effectiveness in this area by quantity of influence, I feel as though I have been less effective here this year, also. The College continues to hire and promote faculty who increase the technology gap between the faculty as a whole and the student body as a whole. While the faculty in general are slowly developing their communication skills, the incoming students, reflecting society as a whole, are galloping ahead.
I have been noting that gap for twenty years, which is why President Sullivan challenged me to write the Title III grant and include a strong communications technology component. In the mid-1990's, I tried to inspire the faculty to move more quickly and close the gap, but I failed. When I started using Ricci Street and teaching in the MBA program, I was able to start closing the gap. I made it a point that no one entering that program would know more about the Internet than I did or would have better media communications skills than I had. As it turned out, only one incoming MBA student was on a par with me. However, dozens of the students came in with more sophisticated knowledge and better skills than any of the other faculty. I worked hard and patiently with the MBA faculty to close the gap from their end.
Now I am returning to the Humanities Department. While the faculty as a whole are much further along than when I left, they still hold on to paper as though it were their binky. I anticipate more resistance than I had in the Business Department as the gap between faculty and students widens.
I drafted the new Handbook's section on portfolios and the formative periodic professional review. As a result, I feel a responsibility to model the process. This year, I was very effective in doing so.
This year, in the interests of transparence and accountability, I published my portfolio online. I believe that I am the only faculty member to do that, which I consider unfortunate. This faculty has a lot to be proud of and the Internet gives us the means to expose ourselves to the world.
In Fall 2008, I went through the professional review process as mandated by the new Handbook. In retrospect, the process seemed to go well. I had my first official classroom observation in many years, and I was further impressed with the greatly increased burden on the department chairs under the new Handbook.
In this area, I increased my effectiveness dramatically this year in preparation for my sabbatical, which I discuss in the scholarship section of this self-evaluation.
While I can see a lot of value in face-to-face professional
conferences and meetings and in periodical publications, I feel as though my
online participation in the mailing lists of web designers, marketing
specialists, and curriculum developers is an ongoing and cost-effective way to
accomplish the same objective, that is, to keep current.
The undergraduates seem very happy that I relate to them through their extra-curricular interests, especially athletics. This positive feedback creates a virtuous cycle when it causes me to attend more events, follow the box scores more closely, and encourage other faculty to join me.
On sabbatical, I will not contribute to any committees this spring. However, in Fall 2008, I will return to on-campus activity and I expect to continue to contribute fully to committee work.
I anticipate working on the writing curriculum instead of the business curriculum. I would like to work on the general education curriculum, but the negative feedback mentioned above may preclude that.
As I noted in last year's self-evaluation, I continue to receive negative feedback from faculty colleagues about the portfolio requirement in the new Handbook. It has made me more conscious of my own portfolio, including this self-assessment, as a model. I remain eager to cooperate with Faculty Council or the VPAA's office or anyone else who wants to organize a more formal portfolio development process.
As I decided on my sabbatical projects, I began pitching them to students and colleagues. Their body language and oral feedback have help me chose my major project and focus it. See the scholarship section for further discussion.
|
Learn more about how these how these shorter term objectives fit into: |
Because I will be on sabbatical for the first half of 2008, I will not participate as much in undergraduate student life. The thing that I will miss most is the senior season of the core of the women's basketball team that I have been following closely for the last three years.
However, when I return for the fall semester, I intend to continue my active participation in campus events. While in the past, I have not been successful in encouraging other faculty to attend events, I will increase those efforts.
When I return in the fall, I hope to continue serving on the citizenship triad committee where I can contribute especially to the international component based on my recent experience of living overseas and supervising my daughter, who is doing a semester abroad at the University of Leiden.
When I return in the fall, I expect to participate in the Humanities Department's ongoing review of the writing sequence. I want to pay special attention to ENG 260 Business and Professional Writing, which needs to include more computer skills.
While on sabbatical as well as when I return, I will continue to assist faculty who want to use my web server for their course materials.
Now that I have gone through the portfolio and professional review process, I expect to work with faculty colleagues to help them prepare their portfolios. I will maintain my own portfolio as a model.
In Spring 2008, most of my service to the College will come in this area, as discussed in the scholarship section.
In Fall 2008, I intend to apply for full professor status.
Based on what I get done during my sabbatical in the Netherlands, I will prepare in the fall for the banked-hours leave that I am taking in Spring 2009.
modified: December 2007
by Douglas Anderson
http://toLearn.net/portfolio/selfeval/2007/service.htm