Changing Seasons for the Chair

 We're having a gorgeous autumn here, with nice brisk days, with mostly good sunshine.  Not too cold.  The leaves seems slow changing this year.

For me as chair, I'm changing seasons.  The semester is fully in flow and I've now done class observations with all of our new teachers this semester.  Fortunately, they all went well.

I've written some letters of recommendation for folks looking for jobs.  My fingers are firmly crossed.

And now the turn is to writing letters for folks undergoing five year after tenure reviews, for folks going up for promotion, and for folks going up for tenure (and promotion).  The after tenure review letter(s) isn't as important, since there's less at stake (no promotion, no pay raise).  The promotion and tenure and promotion letters are super important, though, and take a good deal of time.

We're also finalizing plans for spring, and figuring out the last bits of filling in first year writing courses left open by the colleagues who left over the summer.  That's good because we're also about to start fall course planning and scheduling.  I never realized how far out those have to be done until I found myself on the schedules committee during my second year here.

And, of course, I'm already a couple days late ordering my books for spring semester... but I'm guessing most of my colleagues are, too.

In my class, a senior seminar, we're moving from introductory readings and short, low stakes writing assignments, to beginning to focus on the final project for the course.

In the garden, things are basically in prep mode for winter.  I need to bring some things in to prevent freezing in lines, and need to mow at least one more time.  Then there's some trimming and cleanup.  It never ends!