- student data - amazingly the only person who can do the extract had to do some catch-up hours this week, did three of them today, and pulled our extract. PLUS we're only missing about 20% of the student info (over 50% of STAFF info, but really...). It's not in the easy to use format, but it's not impossible, just a gigantic Excel spreadsheet which I have the skills to wrangle into a usable shape. Phew! Vegan, halal, and citrus free meals can now be ordered before the final final final deadline...
- handouts - they're back and properly bound. Phew!
- the field notebooks have been delivered. To the Faculty Office, on the third floor of a building the other side of campus. Four boxes of 50 hardback notebooks, plus other necessities like flipcharts and pens. I can't deal, so I asked for advice, and the Faculty clerk is going to personally load them all on a trolley and wheel it over to my building tomorrow morning and leave them with Incoming's Administrative Support Person who is NOT supposed to take deliveries or help with anything student facing, since I will be in a meeting. I will then ask the class for four students who can carry boxes and get them to take the boxes upstairs to the room where I need them to be. (in the old days of last autumn, orders larger than one box were delivered by a porter who would take them to the room you wrote on the order... but this new system is much easier and more efficient). SOLUTION!
- ...and then there're all the students who are suddenly realising that when we said attendance at the pre-field trip briefing is compulsory and required to go on the field trip, we actually meant if you aren't there in class tomorrow you won't get to go on the trip, and are NOW complaining about how they didn't know they had to go to class and they have travel home booked, or a driving test, or or or... Guys, you got your timetable three weeks ago by email, last Monday (18th) on paper, and were told everything was required. WHY IS THIS A SURPRISE??? Incoming finally reacted to an email about this (he's been conspicuous by his absence this week, but of course in the new org structure his role is more "Welcome and this is the person who actually deals with students, now I'm going to another Strategic Planning Meeting" than the old hands on head of department idea) in a way which both made every academic involved feel like we got it wrong AND which basically said "you're all big meanies is it REALLY so HARD to do individual briefings for our customers who just paid a Very Big Fee and are all New?" And the thing is... we ARE doing that. Just wrapped in a shell of "these are the rules, we must consult, this is a special exception and you must not do it again" (along with some "will we be in trouble if there is an incident?" thinking because noone trusts Incoming to really have their back if it did go to law. Now, I think he'd be really hurt by that, and I'm personally 99% sure he WOULD have his staff's back in public, though he'd probably be snarky and difficult for the next twenty years or so in private, but that 1% is scary, especially in a context of job reviews and rumoured major financial problems (which I find it hard to take properly seriously just because that's happened every 2-3 years as long as I've been here, plus what with the state of the world and the country and the sector it's not like we're at all unusual...).
In eight day's time I will be home from the trip. And it will feel so amazing.
Sounds like progress. Hurrah! (And yes, the new procedures sound marvelously efficient -- for someone in some universe viewing some spreadsheet and/or org chart, I'm sure, but not for on-the-ground faculty trying to do their jobs).
ReplyDeleteIt occurs to me that while the old accusation that faculty live in an Ivory Tower is clearly not true, at least for all but the most elite faculty, there's increasing evidence that administrative types spend their time interacting with each other in top-floor corporate-type suites that are at least as detached from real life, including the real lives of students and teaching faculty, as any ivory tower ever was. Our administrative building actually has something that closely resembles a penthouse (mostly-glass top floor, which to be fair isn't all that high and is probably in part a sop to the zoning regulators since the admin building is on an edge of the campus that abuts a neighborhood of single-family homes, but still, the metaphor seems to work. They're also closer to a parking garage -- and the limited connection points to public transit -- than most of the hoi polloi, which may count as the truest privilege on our very car-dependent suburban campus).