Fall Convocation Blues

We had our welcome back convocation for my college yesterday. We do this every August.

It was set at our West Campus. We gathered in the new and shiny Fitness Center. It is a gorgeous facility, the equal or the better of any private club in town (but sans swimming pool). The weights and machines are state-of-the-art and very expensive. Of course, just as West Campus is a ghost town, the Fitness Center was a desert - no students to be seen pumping iron, or going for the burn. Perhaps it was closed for the day.

The formal greetings followed the traditional buffet breakfast. The President introduced one of the VPs who was asked to read the names and the professional histories of those faculty being honored as Outstanding Teachers this year.

Seven people from the four campuses were honored. As Dr. Barney R. said to me after the names were announced “Of the seven, only one has a doctorate degree.” And as I said to Barney, “Only two are men.” I guess men with doctorates aren’t seen as outstanding teachers too often. I know that the most consistently positive comments I hear from students about their teachers are about history teacher Dr. M. H. He’s never gotten this award, and, because he’s a political recluse more involved in teaching than smoozing, I doubt he ever will. Outstanding Teachers are often not all that outstanding as teachers. I know you’re not surprised at this.

The VP tried to read a professional biography of each. It was painful to listen to. He stumbled. He halted. He mispronounced words. When he spoke about one person’s involvement in Todos los Juntos, he pronounced “Juntos” with a hard J rather than the appropriate H sound required in Spanish. The first time he did it, there was a gasp from the audience. The second and third times, I saw a Spanish teacher physically wince.

Then it was time for the President’s address. The theme of the convocation was “One College.” The President began by saying “The dictionary defines ‘one’ as...”

I think every bad eighth-grade essay I ever read or heard spoken began in the same way “The dictionary defines ‘freedom’ as...” Or “The dictionary defines ‘patriotism’ as...” Or “The dictionary defines ‘pussy-whipped’ as...” I was embarrassed for him. It was puerile. It was vacuous. The former president was a much more entertaining speaker. The current president just read his talk in a wooden mechanical way.

Then B.S. was introduced. I’m not kidding, those are his initals. He spoke last year too. I guess he gets paid for his contributions, I dunno. Last year he spoke for about five minutes and then directed everyone to the forms found on each table. We were to fill these out, talk about them, and then report on them to the group as a whole. I’m not sure what his purpose was then, and, since we did exactly the same thing this year, what his purpose was now.

On our tables were beautiful, expensive, four-color fliers describing my college’s “Core Values.” On either side of an impressive school logo the words “Integrity” and “Quality” were prominently displayed. Below were the five core values that some committee had produced. These were “Student Success,” “Excellence,” “Stewardship,” “Innovation,” and “Diversity,” each defined with bullet subheadings.

We each had blank forms on our tables with three questions for each of us to answer. Question one asked “Which of Integrity, Quality, Student Success, Excellence, or Stewardship do you identify with most strongly?”

First, what’s the difference between Quality and Excellence? Excellence was defined, Quality was not. I imagine someone thinks they’re different. They were both listed in question one.

And what is Integrity? It wasn’t defined either. I spent two years on the last college self-study as the chair of the Integrity sub-committee and in that two year period, no one was able to provide a definition that all of us on the committee were comfortable with. But no one even bothered to try for this exercise.

Question two asked about how I as a teacher went about creating these core values in the classroom. Question three asked about how the school could achieve these values.

We each answered these questions as best we could, talked about them at our tables, and then B.S. had volunteers come up and “share” what they talked about. If he got only a free lunch for his involvement in this, B.S. was overpaid.

Barney leaned over to me and said “Can you believe that we’re doing this?” I sure can. My teachers in elementary school had the class do similar exercises when we were in the fourth grade so that they could sneak off to the teacher’s lounge for a tinkle and a smoke. It’s called busy-work.

When this meeting broke up, we were allowed to choose our next activity. I chose to hear a presentation about the new MyCollege mail system. We have Internet based Blackboard for communicating with our students. We have the Faculty Web. We have Lotus Notes for e-mail among ourselves. And now we have MyCollege to communicate with students. Yes, four separate programs, each with a different log-on, much of them overlapping.

The presentation was in a dark auditorium, darkened so that we in the audience could see the slides presented. Unfortunately, the slides were black type on a dark blue background, so they were nearly impossible to see. The presenter had a microphone available, but chose not to use it. This was a bad decision because he was very difficult to hear without it. We couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear. The presentation was scheduled for an hour, but could have been given twice in twenty minutes. The presenter would show us a screen and then say “Do you see where there is a place labeled ‘Your ID’? That’s were you put your ID. Do you see the space labeled ‘Password’? This is where you type your password.” It is said that a job expands in time to fill the time allotted to it; that was certainly true for this presentation. At forty-five minutes in, the presenter asked if there were any more questions or comments. No, there weren’t. I had to pee pretty bad, so I sneaked out the back, sure they were wrapping it all up and that there was nothing else to be said. I took my whiz, strolled the campus for a few minutes, explored the bookstore, and about twenty minutes later I was passing the auditorium again and noticed that only THEN were people coming out. The presenter has finished twenty minutes ago, but had dismissed the crowd only now. I wonder what I missed.

My college amazes me more and more each year and I find I have less and less tolerance for it. My supervisor said yesterday that there are those who are very positive about these activities, those that tolerate them, and those who are actively hostile to them. I think I’m slipping into the third category.

When it came time for the all-campus psychology discipline meeting, I noticed that Assistant Professors Q. and F. weren’t present. Again. This, and Q. a former Outstanding Teacher winner.

I haven’t seen them at these kinds of things in several years, but I know they’re still employed because I occasionally get e-mail from them. Have they figured it out, while I still have not?

They’re gonna get in a lot of trouble.

A LOT of trouble.

Right.

P.S. In one of the meetings I had to endure today, the Provost for my campus said “I think yesterday’s convocation was one of the best we ever had.” I wonder which one she attended. It sure wasn’t the one I went to.