Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Q&A

Q. How many deans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

At most schools: A. Call maintenance!

At NWU: A. OMG, we need to hire a new dean and put him in charge of lightbulb supervision and management. He'll need a team of lightbulb orderers and installers to supervise, too. Maybe we need a deanling under him to handle disposing of dead lightbulbs?

And most of all, we need a really good acronym for the committee that will assess lightbulbs and undergraduate education outcomes!

8 comments:

  1. Not sure you need a dean for that. Sounds like a position requiring a new Executive Vice President for Enlightenment and Learning, although a dean or two could report to the new EVP as the intiative gets rolled out.

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  2. ~snort~ wouldn't there first need to be a committee to survey needs, and possibly also a committee to design the mission and objectives, and then a hiring committee?

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  3. Yeah, what Kathy said. You skipped the step where you form a task group to study the issue and decide whether the light bulb is actually burned out and whether some other solution might be implemented and whether students don't actually learn better in the dark and how can we assess that, by the way? Is there some true assessment of how light/lack of light affects student learning outcomes?

    After the task force and/or committee has studied this issue for about a year, and made recommendations to the provost (which have been returned for more study) then MAYBE we can form a committee to begin looking at studying the issue of whether we should hire a dean of light-bulb implementation.

    If it's funded, of course.

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  4. I never knew there would be an upside to a budget crisis. Here the answer is, you'll have to change all the lightbulbs while you assess undergraduate education. THe committee is CLUA -- the Committee on Lightbulb and Undergraduate Assessment.

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  5. Are you sure you don't work at *my* university??

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  6. I agree with what delagar said, which means you'll probably need to go for a bond. At least $180 million, I'd say. BTW, have they checked the accreditatin standards on the issue? They better make sure they tie the expenses to the strategic plan.

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  7. Anonymous2:47 PM

    Committee for Lightbulbs and Undergraduate Education is already CLUE!
    Can I be CLUE Dean? Does it come with a CLUEstick?
    jc

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