"Onboarding"

 I think it's an incredibly clunky term, but it's the term HR folks seem to use.  It's the big picture practice of bringing someone new to work in your area.

For us, we're replacing our administration staff person.  As I mentioned here and here, our former administrative staff person, the person we hired over the summer, left in December.

Our new person is starting today.  I'm very hopeful.  They've worked elsewhere on campus, and has a stellar reputation, the sort of reputation where, when someone hears about our hire, they immediately say how lucky we are, and what a great person they are. 

Part of the reason I'm hopeful, and even know about "onboarding" is that one of the programs I signed up for after I got the mandate to sign up for "leadership training" was a campus-specific program on hiring.  Part of it wasn't that new to me, but part was about "onboarding," and that was super helpful.  (I was pretty cynical about this programming going in, but now I'm quite hopeful about the campus specific programs.  If they're half as helpful as this one was, I'll be pretty darned happy with them.)

Not only was the program helpful, but at the end, the HR person in charge sent us an "onboarding toolkit for managers" with lists of things to take are of on my end, things to talk about with the new person (like asking what training they need for various duties), and things to put together to ask them to do early on that will give them a sense of success.

So, I put together a couple of folders yesterday: one has several documents that might be helpful, the recently retired administrative staffer's to do list for the year, the chair's duty list and calendar, lists of department members by rank, area, and offices and such.  Another has copies of all the stuff our new person will need for scheduling (a major part of this person's duties has to do with scheduling).  And the third has a list of relatively easy tasks that they can take care of fairly soon.  There was a little bit of filing, and then signing up for a procurement card, and stuff.

Some of all this is easier because the new person has been a campus employee already.  So I didn't need to arrange for a campus ID or anything.  

***

What with the hiring, and all the reappointment letters for tenure track colleagues, and so forth, I've been incredibly busy these past few weeks.

Now, I'm a bit behind on grading, but might be able to catch up on that today.  And if so, then I'm almost caught up with all the things I should be caught up with.

With no spring break this semester (the administration effort to keep students from traveling to party destinations even though most of our students usually spend spring break pulling extra shifts at their workplace to try to make money, or visiting family, because most of them can't afford a trip to some sunny beach to party), we're all running on empty, on the rivet, or whatever other metaphor you can think of.

I'm hoping to be able to catch my breath a bit on Thursday...

Reading Evaluations of Teaching - Time Spent Doing Homework?

 I've spent much of the day reading evaluations so that I can do yearly reviews for my departmental colleagues, and I'm weirdly fascinated by one of the questions and the responses.

The question asks students to estimate how many hours per week they spend outside of class on the course.  And it gives them several options, ranging from under one hour to two hours or more.

By way of background, we teach three and five credit hour courses in my department, mostly (where each hour in class is one credit, and .  When I was in college, I was told I should plan to work outside of class about 3 hours for each hour inside of class, except for labs, where you'd work about an hour or an hour and a half outside for each hour in lab.  Or so we were told.  (I'm not sure I ever did; I wasn't the best undergrad student.  But by the time I went back to school, I did at least that.  And my grades reflected the change.)

Most students choose the fewer than two hours a week option.  (Though in my one course last semester, 8/10 students who responded said more than two hours a week.)

Does this mean our students are smarter than before?  

That we aren't demanding as much work as when I was a student? 

That we may be assigning work, but it's not getting done?

Are they responding to more honest expectations?  (ie.  maybe the people who told me to study 3 hours outside for every hour inside were wishful thinking?)

That students work more efficiently than we did?  (This HAS to be part of it.  Just being able to type things up on a computer and make changes easily is SO much faster than painstakingly typing on a typewriter and having to make corrections with wite-out or whatever.  Also looking stuff up is MUCH faster now.)

***

How should I think about those responses?  I tend to think that students spending more time working outside of class reflects the course's rigor.  But maybe that's wrong?

In the end, it's an interesting, but sort of useless question for me, I guess, in reviewing colleagues.

 

And Now What?

 We requested for three people to have fully on line schedules for fall, and were turned down on all fronts.

The good: the dean just told the registrar's office to make the change, rather than telling me to make the change.

The bad: my colleagues will be at greater risk.

My question: Part of me really wants to resign as chair and retire and let someone else deal with this crap.  But...  I'd feel really awful doing so in some ways.  And really good in others.

***

And still, our administrators are working remotely, for the most part.  Of the ten special parking spaces, two are usually filled on any given day.  Now, maybe there aren't fully 10 people with slots.  But there are more than two.

Leading firmly from the very back, miles behind whatever trenches we imagine ourselves in.

***

There was an article in Forbes recently saying that more than half of tenured university faculty have considered leaving the field or retiring early.  I posted it on my effbee page, and bunches of people have said that yes, they're doing one or the other.