Week 2

This week I’ve been shoring up my grasp on my job as a department director. I got some advice at the Director’s meeting about what specifically I was supposed to be doing, as well as helping out with some suggestions for other departments, like Art. Kevin and I have made sure that our departments are up to speed o their jobs, and know all the important dates for their jobs. We worked in our department meetings on weekly blogs and the Dirty Dozen, and stressed the importance of both of those things. Another thing I’ve been stressing on my team is the use of Trello. I understand the feeling of not wanting to use it, but Kevin and I have been impressing upon the teams the importance of keeping their work organized, and the importance for their grade of our ability to watch their progress. I am currently preparing a schedule spreadsheet of everything that will be needed at what times for presentation during our meeting with Sandra Jackson, which I will send to Shannon to be looked over. Shannon has offered to come to the first contract meeting since several aspects have changed, which I gladly accepted. It will be nice to have the security of another experienced person helping to make sure nothing is overlooked.

Spring 2016 week 1 post - "The Return"

It’s very good to be back in Visions. I’m ready and excited to hit the ground running and get Visions 6 really up and running. I’m still getting used to being in charge of a team, but I think that is going well. There is great communication amongst the department and they are not afraid to ask questions, which is good. So far I have been able to help them quickly and efficiently, and I plan to continue doing that. Everyone is on top of their work so far and I don’t expect that to slip any time soon. I’ve been grading abstracts this week, and it has me all excited to get into the jurying process, and especially for the films to come. As far as the abstracts are concerned, I’m largely underwhelmed so far. With several notable exceptions, a great many of them have been lackluster and poorly written, or just seem to not make sense. I am doing my best to try to see past the abstract to find papers that are well written and interesting, but might have had rough or choppy abstracts that don’t represent the larger work. Over the course of the weekend, I am going to go ahead and start working on the parking situation. It will be good to have that locked in early and I plan to be done by week 3’s class meeting. All in all, I am very excited for what is to come.