Revisioning

I floated the idea for this blog last week, and I received some encouraging feedback and also some strong cautionary remarks from people I respect a great deal.

On the encouraging side, there seems to be a general desire for more transparency and communication on campus, and this may provide one route toward that goal. There was a suggestion that I open the blog up to chairs of committees on campus, which I think is a good one. I am going to take it a step farther (see below).

On the cautionary side, several people suggested that it would be difficult to maintain my role of neutral mediator as clerk of faculty if I were posting opinions on issues here. A couple people suggested that having any discussion of faculty issues in a public place could be dangerous.

As a result of these recommendations, I've re-envisioned this project to be something a little bit different. Here are my new thoughts:

• I'm shifting this from being a personal blog to being a community forum. I'll ask committee chairs (or their colleagues) to post periodic updates on the work their committees are doing. I'll also open the forum up to any faculty member who wants to contribute something related to college policy, teaching, faculty life, or campus issues.
• To facilitate this shift, I've changed the name from ClerkBlog, which was inappropriately centered on me, and changed it to The Moon Room, the physical space on campus where we hold our meetings, share our business, and communicate our ideas. It's my hope that in this online version of the Moon Room, more people will be able to express their opinions, especially those who feel silenced at meetings or who prefer expressing themselves in writing. At the very least, this version of the Moon Room will have more comfortable seating.
• I'll moderate and edit the site, and I will post here when I have something to say, but I'll try hard to avoid taking sides on any business the faculty is considering. 
• I'll also experiment with posting queries here. My understanding of the Quaker religious tradition is that queries are to promote self-examination and reflection (see one set of examples here). I'm still working on this idea, but I think posting questions and asking faculty to share responses would be an interesting way to start discussions outside of the constraints of faculty meetings.

One suggestion I'm going to reject for now is making this a more limited-access forum, for example hosting it on our Moodle site, accessible only to faculty. One person I spoke with felt strongly that this should be the case because the issues we discuss are often private, and another suggested that having this site visible to the public might lead to press attention or unfortunate quotations appearing elsewhere.

While these are valid concerns, I think having an open discussion in public helps. I've heard a lot of desire for more transparency and communication, and having this forum out in the open should help us be transparent not only to each other but also to the whole community, even if it comes with some dangers. While there are some discussions on campus that should be confidential and closed, I think we keep more hidden (either intentionally or unintentionally) than we should. Openness and transparency is the more difficult and challenging choice, but in my experience it is usually the healthier one. Plus, logging into Moodle is a pain. 

If you decide to post or comment here (and I hope you will) please remember that you are speaking in public and representing the college as well as yourself. If you would like to be added as a contributor, please let me know.

As I said in my first post:

It's an experiment, and it may fail. I may not update it regularly enough to be useful. Nobody may read it. It may give rise to hard feelings and conflict. If so, I'll give it a merciful, swift death. But for the time being, we'll give it a go.

January Term faculty forum and governance issues

The discussion of January term in the recent faculty forum got a little off track at the start when some participants suggested that the implementation of January Term could be made permanent beyond the pilot period without further faculty approval. I took issue with that, and I'd like to say why briefly here.

• The faculty clearly approved the January Term only as a pilot program, not as a permanent program. Making it permanent without further approval from the faculty is directly counter to the sense of the meeting I got at that time. I haven't yet gone back to check the specific recorded minutes, but I was there, and it was clear we were only approving a trial program, not a permanent program.

• The faculty clearly have authority over this area granted by section 1.300 of the handbook, which reads:

The faculty establishes policies regarding curriculum, faculty personnel, degree requirements, methods of instruction, and educational issues related to campus life, subject to the authority of the President, and the Board of Trustees.

The adoption of a permanent January Term directly relates both to curriculum and methods of instruction.

Beyond that, and more importantly, I also can't figure out why anyone would want to push January Term through without explicit support of the faculty. We are strongest as a faculty and as an institution when we are unified, and we are generally pretty smart when we act collectively to guide the school. Discussion, consensus, and mutual commitment to action is deeply rooted in our Quaker tradition - it's how we do things. Without it, we are rudderless, discordant, and foolish.

I've done January Term projects for both of the past two pilot years, both of them small on-campus independent study projects, and they've been really cool experiences for me and (I hope) for my students. I think January Term, while not without costs and complications, could be something great, and I think with consensus, curricular integrity, and strong faculty involvement, we can make it so.

Welcome

Hi, everybody. I'm hoping to use this as a space to discuss issues facing Guilford College faculty during my tenure as clerk of faculty. I think having an informal discussion space here might offer the possibility for more communication and clarity than is available through normal faculty discussions. I'll post my thoughts on faculty issues occasionally with links to resources. I'm also open to having guest posts by faculty with something to say.

Some ground rules:

• Please be respectful in your comments. Personal attacks or anything in that neighborhood will be deleted.
• When commenting, please use your real name unless you feel uncomfortable doing so. I may delete anonymous comments as I feel it is necessary.

It's an experiment, and it may fail. I may not update it regularly enough to be useful. Nobody may read it. It may give rise to hard feelings and conflict. If so, I'll give it a merciful, swift death. But for the time being, we'll give it a go.