Author: Matthew

philosopher, iconoclast, technoboy, musician, conjuration battle-mage, dean

How I learned to love HB2223

As one of our development day events last week, we held a session concerning CoReq-ing (including a delightful and informative presentation by Dr. Sonya Armstrong), so I thought I’d take a moment to share a few thoughts about my relationship to HB 2223.

First, I must ask you to resist the temptation to write “co-wrecking,” even though that is the pronunciation. In fact, for reasons I will explain, I think — however we got here — CoReq-ing is good for student success. But before we get to that, what’s HB 2223 all about?

Continue reading “How I learned to love HB2223”

Welcome to Spring, 2019!

Welcome back! I hope you enjoyed a pleasant winter break and that you’ve returned rejuvenated and revved up for another semester!

Welcome back! I hope you enjoyed a pleasant winter break and that you’ve returned rejuvenated and revved up for another semester!

I’d like to take a moment to offer a few reminders and outline my priorities for the spring. Let’s start with nudges.

  • Check your rosters! If students turn up in your classroom who are not on the roster, please refer them to an appropriate office to make things official. We have new Registration Liaisons at each campus to help!
  • Submit your Attendance Certification by the deadline. (And remember that Attendance Certification is a per student function, not per class. Students who add your class after you submit Attendance Certification won’t automatically be certified.)

There’s a lot going on in our division. Here are our priorities for this Spring:

  • IntFest2019, Friday, March 29
  • Vision+Voice
  • Badging project, including these pilots
    • Critical thinking component skills
    • “Soft” Skills in LA
    • Leadership Skills
  • LAHC Internships (Anne-Marie)
  • English Proficiency assessment (ESOL partnering with ABE and CE)
  • Liberal Arts Institute 2.0 (with Sam and LASMS)
  • LA Co-Req Oversight workgroup
  • Honors
  • Enrollment Management Self-study (one part of which is our Gateway Courses study)
  • Dual Credit initiatives (including new dual credit coordinators for English!)

If one of these projects sounds exciting, be in touch — there’s plenty to keep us busy. I’m looking forward to working with you in pursuit of our mission.

I’m looking forward to Spring semester, including a bit of teaching. I’m teaching the second iteration of Logic for Game Design course.

Have a great semester!

November Global Issues Speaker

ACC welcomes Dr. Ghislain Potriquet, one of our collaborating professors at The University of Strasbourg, our partner for ACC Government Department’s Study Abroad Program in France. Dr. Potriquet is delivering the November lecture in The Global Issues Speakers Series, Wednesday, November 14, EVC 8500, 5:00-7:00 PM.

Economic and Societal Changes in The United States and Europe

In both the United States and France, two unlikely candidates won the last presidential elections: Donald J. Trump and Emmanuel Macron. As the two leaders met for the first time in the spring of 2017, their differences were eclipsed by a strong relationship. Their so-called “bromance” continues to puzzle observers on both side of the Atlantic. What do the two leaders have really in common? Ghislain Potriquet will attempt to answer this question by putting their elections in perspective. He will argue that they are evidence of broad economic and societal changes in the United States and Europe.

Ghislain Potriquet is associate professor of American studies at the Université de Strasbourg, France. He holds a PhD in American studies from Université Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle. He teaches American history and political sciences classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His research interests include language diversity and historiography. 

Selection Process Update

As you probably know, we are implementing many of the recommendations of the DC Compensation workgroup, including a newly defined job description for assistant deans and the new role of Registration Liaison. Letters of interest were due earlier this week. Here’s what you need to know about the selection process:

Assistant Deans

Each dean area will have two assistant deans, selected according to these guidelines from our AVP, Gaye Lynn Scott:

  • use a hiring committee of at least three
  • look for expertise or familiarity with programs in the dean area
  • look for expertise or familiarity with student learning outcomes and assessment, program planning (planning in general), continuous improvement, etc. for the AD Pathways
  • look for expertise or familiarity with teaching in an online environment, Quality Matters, good practice in distance education for the AD Distance Ed
  • consider asking for a presentation or a written overview along the lines of “how would you help the programs in this dean area systematically and effectively meet QM standards for all DE offerings by Fall 2020?” for the interview

We want to have our assistant deans in place for the spring semester, and so I am in the process of forming selection committees in the next week. Once I have the letters of interest from HR, we will review and select interviewees. My plan is to have the selection completed before Thanksgiving.

Registration Liaisons

Registration liaisons are faculty who perform many of the same registration-related functions of the old assistant dean position. Instead of release time, Registration Liaisons will receive stipends. There will be 16 registration liaisons assigned to specific campuses and reporting to the academic dean for the assigned campus. As of this week, the projected assignments are:

  • Cypress:  2 (one for CYP, one for SGC), reporting to Matthew
  • Eastview:  1, reporting to PatHays:  1, reporting to Giao
  • Northridge, 3, reporting to Lorlie
  • Highland:  3 (also covering Elgin), reporting to David and/or Tom
  • Rio Grande:  1, reporting to Sam
  • Riverside:  2, reporting to Brandon
  • Round Rock:  2, reporting to Brandon and/or Pat
  • South Austin:  1, reporting to Linda

These projections are based on student population characteristics at the campuses, but note that registration liaisons will assist students in all AoSs. (For more information about this role, see Mike Midgley’s recent email about the recommendations of the DC Compensation Workgroup.)

We will likely adopt a selection process similar to that for Assistant Deans. I will update this post when I have more specifics.

In case you are wondering, LAHC department chairs also benefitted from the workgroup’s study. Beginning in the spring, all our LAHC DCs will have an increase in release time to support their work. In future, LAHC DCs will have 18 LEH per year release.

I am very pleased with the long-overdue “upgrade” to department chair compensation. I think the realignment of assistant deans to support departments and registration liaisons to support students is also a productive change.

Let me know if you have questions!

Fire with fire

If you haven’t heard this article by Shankar Vedantam (known for The Hidden Brain), do yourself a favor. The story explores why a career in nursing doesn’t attract more men. The research is fascinating, but what struck me was the message in the final few seconds:

Stereotypes are powerful because the stories we tell about ourselves are powerful. They shape how we see the world and how the world sees us. But in the end, they’re only stories. And stories – we can rewrite them.

Why More Men Don’t Get Into The Field Of Nursing

This is the core principle of “narrative therapy,” which has been around by other names for a very long time. The power of narrative to shape our understanding of ourselves and others is what attracted me to psychoanalysis in my twenties. If you’d like an example, read almost of any of Freud’s cases (preferably in Freud’s German), and you’ll see that one of the reasons for Freud’s influence is his ability to tell compelling stories.

This particular piece on nursing suggests that the way to combat stereotypes about nursing as a “women’s field” is to put up an alternate stereotype. In other words, just explaining why nursing might be appealing to men isn’t sufficient; a compelling story about men who are nurses is needed to provide access to a sense of identity.

The moral of this story: On the positive side, stories are compelling, but the negative side is . . . stories are compelling. And this brings me back to my training and practice in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Narrative has the power to constitute at least some the realities of identity, but whichever fire you choose, the danger is burning down the tower of reason. And so it was that my supervisors reinforced the importance of reality-testing in the revisionist narrative of psychotherapy.

But reality-testing the narratives that establish and sustain identity is really the hard part, not least because our access to the real is mediated by narrative.

That’s a lot to expect from “only stories.”

Congrats, faculty fellows!

Four faculty from LAHC are among the 2018-19 Faculty Fellows. Please join me in congratulating our faculty!

  • Susan Meigs, ENGL
  • Anne Fletcher, INRW
  • Aimee Finney, CommS
  • Erin Bannen, PRH

The Faculty Fellows is a project of ACC’s Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. Learn more about this program on the FCTL website. Get involved! Find out about additional opportunities to be part of the action!

Building (Honors) Bridges

This fall, we’re piloting a new-ish type of course: the Honors Bridge.

When I became dean of LAHC, one of the programs in my portfolio is the Honors Program. I spent a good bit of time last year in conversation with colleagues, both here and in other institutions, thinking about Honors. I was very lucky to have a spirited group of faculty in the ad hoc Honors Workgroup, and they helped formulate a new direction for Honors, building on the great work of the past.

One of our major concerns is access — which is another way of saying that we were concerned about the inclusiveness of the program. I have often pointed out that decisions on the “front-end” of a decision-process often have unintended but destructive effects on the implementation end. I think that’s a good way to look at Honors programs.

Continue reading “Building (Honors) Bridges”

PechaKucha!

Check out this opportunity from Theresa Glenn and our Communication Studies department.

Join us for a student speech contest coming up early next month.  The date is set for Tuesday, October 9th — two weeks from today.  The theme for this year is “What’s Your Story” told in a 10X20 or 5X40 PechaKucha format.  If you’re not familiar with the Pecha Kucha format you may explore this special type of public speaking arrangement at www.pechakucha.org.  Basically, students will ‘tell their story’ using 10 PPt slides and speak on each slide for 20 seconds or a new option this year is to use five slides and speak on each slide for 40 seconds. Yes, the slides are timed.    Also, the theme is broad, but we are looking for students to tell a personal story of struggle, triumph, survival, and/or all of the above.  It must be a true story and appropriate for the college scene.

EXAMPLES:  

Prizes, prizes, prizes!  Yes, we have prizes for the top three student presentations.  A $100 Visa gift card is the first place, $50 2nd place, and $25 for 3rd place.  

Please contact: Prof. Gretchen Harries at gharries@austincc.edu if you have any questions.  Submissions are due to Gretchen by Monday, Oct. 8th.  She is willing to help the students as well with their entries. 

Thanks for your support.  Whether you encourage your students to compete or offer extra credit for just attending, I appreciate your support.  Last year was an amazing launch of the speech contest.  I’m looking forward to an even bigger, better event this year!!!

Here are two events to consider: The Austin Art Alliance is holding this year’s city-wide PechaKucha at 2003 Wheeles Lane, Austin 78723 (East I35, just south of 290). Communications Studies is hosting a PechaKucha for ACC students at HLC 4000, to kick off Comms Week. Join us and PechaKucha!

LAHC Convocation resources

Thanks to everyone who attended our LAHC Convocation last week! And I’d like to offer special thanks to those who presented. I’d like to make some resources available to you concerning these topics.

If you’d like to know more, you may contact presenters and view the materials they have provided us. If you have a question or comment for me, email me directly or click on Ask Matthew.

How to buy an organ, part 1

Some of you know that I am a classically-trained organist. What does that mean? Well, mostly it means that I know what all the knobs, pedals, and switches on an instrument like this are for.

I play for at Christ Lutheran Church, just up the road in Georgetown, where I’ve been principal organist for over thirty years. Thanks to a generous bequest, we’re replacing our aging organ with a new Viscount, like the one pictured above.

First things first: Where do you start when you go shopping for an organ? In the next several installments of this series, I’ll tell the whole story—mainly because I’ve had so much fun with this process. Along the way, maybe you’ll pick up a few interesting details about life in the world of organs. Continue reading “How to buy an organ, part 1”