Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Sunday, August 13, 2006

OK readers, a simple question for you to weigh in on...

What is the capital of...oops, no...different bit.

Actually, what, in your humble opinion, is the most transcendant piece of rock guitar music ever created? What semi-lengthy bit of playing carries you beyond the pale of this world to a place where all things soar?

Tell me for I must know and I must hear.

You have your mission.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Well, the pre-week is over and the semester is about to begin. In a lot of ways, this week was a lot like a stage race prologue in that it has set the themes and served to focus the participants on the task at hand. Monday was meeting day. Lots of meetings. We started off with a joint faculty/staff meeting that was pretty insightful. usually, these things are where service pins and bland announcements are made but something must have gotten into the President's mind because he was full of news and plans and explanations and that sort of thing. Very newsy. We undergo "reaffirmation of our accreditation" this year so there was a good bit of discussion about that as well which is always interesting because there's this underlying tension caused by the small amount of uncertainty of passing the process. It's very, very unlikely that we won't get reaffirmed but the very thought that someone can come in and tell us we're not doing our jobs is enough to send a lot of academics to grumbling like curmudgeons without their morning coffee. After that was a faculty meeting that was fairly innocuous and a division meeting where we elect faculty reps to the various committees on campus and the Division Chair runs through a list of do's and don'ts. Since all of our division's faculty returned this year that went pretty smoothly.

Tuesday through Thursday were new student oreintation and registration days. I had another meeting or two and each day I had to give the "They're not in college anymore" talk to the parents in the morning. Afternoons were given over to trying to get schedules for students with more excuses than preparation. We did have a few students who looked to be fairly sharp that were at the tail end of the process for various reasons. The thing that struck me this year about all this is how many of the students didn't seem to have any traction in getting things figured out. We call this "Academic Literacy" and it's a big part fo our new Quality Enhancement Plan that we need to have for reaffirmation. I was talking with the wife at lunch one day and she said something that really struck me. She works at the local K-12 district doing the information system things that need to be done for students to go to school in today's information age. She told me that one young lady had had her schedule changed three times in a week. This led to a discussion about the registration process in high school and I learned that students write down what courses they'd like to take and a schedule sort of magically appears in the weeks (or in the case of this year, months) that follow. The student really has no idea how any of that happens. The high school does this because one of the big accountability measurements is academic progress/graduation rate and they're not about to leave that to a 14-18 year old (poor numbers have funding consequences).

When the student gets to us we expect them to have some sort of clue as to how the college environment works but given the high school environment it is very unlikely that many of them will really have much to go on. We assume that they know the difference between classes, courses and sections as well as the difference between their instructor, advisor and counselor; all of which have somewhat different definitions than they did in high school. It's gotten me wondering what other assumptions we make at the college level that might have been valid 20 years ago when there wasn't No Child Left Behind, Adequate Yearly Progress and Social Promotion but aren't so valid now. My wife used the analogy of the jungle to describe this. There is a law in the jungle of "Higher Education" and all of us professor types learned it through survival of the fittest and the sharpest. Most of us had a head start from strong college-prep programs in high school that were really just for the top students in the school. We know the laws and we understand them. The problem is that when you drop the city-boy into the jungle, there's a good chance that he'll end up as food. Not because he isn't sharp enough or strong enough to make it, he just doesn't know to avoid the snake with the spinning, hypnotic eyes. So, I think I'm going to spend a lot of time this year trying to figure out OUR assumptions (I have a pretty good idea of what the student's assumptions are) and see if maybe I can add something to the discussions when it comes to our QEP.

The final day, Friday, was another faculty meeting where we've taken up the thorny issue that our pre site visit evaluation brought up-Area C. Here in Georgia we have a common "Core" curriculum that all 35 public institutions have agreed to follow. I think it's very cool because transfer is really easy. One of the areas in the Core is Area C-Humanities. The student takes two classes that along with a year of english comp is supposed to make up a student's general education exposure to the areas of the humanities. Our present Area C allows a student to select from a fairly broad list of courses including literature, the various appreciations, philosophy, language and speech. The accreditation agency pointed out that a student could take only what they refer to as "skills" courses such as public speaking and introductory langauge courses to satisfy the requirements and thus not have to take any actually humanities courses. while I don't like it much, I have to agree with them. So the discussion has begun on how to fix this problem. The question is whether or not we are going to require that the students take one literature course. I'd like to see something broader that includes philosophy and the appreciations but I have a feeling that the Humanities Division will push for he lit only option. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I think I have a lot of listening to do to understand the issues.

This weekend will be spent finishing up some planning as well as lab rewrites as we get ready for Monday and the new class of 2006. I'll see mostly sophomores that day but many of them still need to be taught a little bit about college lavel work and my physics classes will likely be the place where that will happen.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, August 06, 2006

So, this was the last weekend of complete freedom before the pre-events for the semester begins (more on that later) and as is my custom, I decided to go out with a big ride. For me that meant throwing down a buck five through the roads of North Central Georgia on another killer heat day. I got out by 8 am and chose to go southwest through Thomaston down to Talbotton, the first home of Georgia’s Supreme Court which wasn’t actually established until 1845 (that’s why you read this…interesting, little known facts thrown in for no clearly established reason). I got to ride on my most favoritely named road, “Po’ Biddy Road” which offers a somewhat easier passage over the Potato Creek and Flint River. My usual route over those two waterways usually involves much climbing through the trailouts of the Appalachian Range. Today, I wanted something a bit easier and less trafficked. Talbotton is a place with a lot of history but not much is happening there now. It’s quite sad really to see a once proud town with it’s grand Southern courthouse reduced to little more than an afterthought and mired in poverty. From there I turned north and headed through Woodland towards Manchester (are you following this on Google Maps?) and the Pine Mountain ridgeline. This is the place to go if you want real climbing intervals around here. There are 10% grades that are a couple of miles long but I had planned to avoid those as I was riding alone on a hot day. Still you’ve got to climb the ridgeline to come from the south to go to the north and Manchester was a good, low place to do it.

I guess the climbing bug bit me though as I made my way up the ridge because I made a dumb decision. I had planned to ride into one of my favorite places in Georgia, Warm Springs, to refill my bottles and take a breather. As I got near the top of the ridge there was a sign that said Hwy. 190 turn left. Now I know Ga 190 as the road that runs through Franklin D Roosevelt State Park. I’ve ridden the western portion of the highway many times on climbing expeditions. This was the eastern end of the highway and for some odd reason I decided it would be cool to do that half so I could say I had ridden the whole thing. Very bad idea. As hard as the climbing on the western side is the east end is worse. The climbs aren’t as long maybe but they’re a bunch steeper. My easiest gear was a 42/23 instead of the normal 42/25 or 39/25 I usually ride through the park so that made things just that much worse. I suffered up the climbs just as the heat was beginning to build. The long, fast decent into Warm Springs from the highest point of the ridge was little comfort to my cooked legs. I do love the descent. It’s one of those where there’s a big truck bailout above the town right next to the turn off to the entrance to FDR’s Little White House (there’s another thing you could Google, if you were so inclined). There are a couple of sections but the screamer bit is about two miles long at 10% or so and you can easily hit 45 mph coasting. That’s usually what I do since I never feel very confident trying to pedal while going that fast as I end up spinning my legs out.

I took the break in Warm Springs at the 100 km/62 mile mark and I’m sure the young Indian-American girl who waited on me was a bit non-plussed when I came into the BP. She tried her best to be friendly and non-chalant but I’m guessing she doesn’t see too many guys waddling around in cycling shoes (I use Look pedals so they have cleats that stick way down) and garishly colored lyrca and spandex. I was wearing my new Team Cycling Max kit with its greens and blues and while not as loud as my old Aaron’s Corporate Furnishings kit’s color scheme, the patterning on the jersey is pretty wild. I got a lot of looks from the people pulling into the gas station on their way to church too. One lady, as is common, kept trying to look at my while also trying to conduct her business with the girl inside the food mart. Good times.

Anyways, the rest of the ride was uneventful other that just trying to survive to the end. The crushing journey on 190 had really fried my legs and finishing the ride was difficult into a slight headwind that was really annoying after 30 miles. To finish, I had to resort to the old Mountain Dew trick at mile ninety. It worked; cooling my body, providing some quickly digestible sugars (more digestible I guess than the Gatorade I had bought in Warm Springs) and, most importantly, a huge boost of caffeine which got me going and kept me going the last fifteen miles or so. The rest of the day has been spent resting and watching sporting events. How about that Tiger Woods? Eleven majors and fifty PGA wins before his thirty-first birthday. Looking at him next to a couple of other golfers over the last couple of days really shows how much bigger and more powerful he is. Tonight, I’ll watch a little of the Hall of Fame pre-season game to see the Raiders. It doesn’t matter much but I like the idea of seeing Art Shell coach on the day after John Madden is inducted. Makes me wish for the old glory days when I would watch every game and root for the silver and black before anyone ever thought of the freakshow stuff. I was a kid in the seventies and grew up hating the Steelers and the “Immaculate Reception”. Newer Raiders fans talk about Tom Brady’s fumble (yes, it was a fumble, don’t argue with me about this) but I remember that game in 1972. Yes, I was only six but I remember it; that and the Steelers always beating the Raiders in the AFC Championship Game. Not that I’m bitter.

Tomorrow starts the time back at the job. I think I’m going to write a blog entry once a week (at least) about the semester like it’s a stage race with 16 stages and a prologue. Tomorrow, the prologue starts with us faculty coming back and going to various and sundry meetings and registering those students who waited until the very last minute to try and get a few classes. As Faculty Senate Chair-Elect, I’ll have a few more meetings than in years past. I’ll also try to put on the finishing touches for my class materials for the first few weeks and avoid the idea of returning to the classroom. It’ll be interesting this year as the freshman class had to pass a standardized test to graduate. I’ll be interested to see if the frosh class does better than the last couple have. I'll keep you posted about the standings, the performances (good and bad) as well as any doping scandals (I'm sure we'll have a few of those). So that I don't get Dooced I'll make sure that I keep the derogatory stuff to a minimum and completely anonymous.

Well, until next time, thanks for reading and keep the rubber side down.

The Physicist   Link Me    |