The beginning of the new school year

At Pace University, as I imagine at many universities across the country, we begin our fall semester and our new academic year this week.  Tomorrow we celebrate with convocation, a coming together of students and faculty to set the tone for the academic year ahead.

And classes begin on Wednesday, which is fitting in a way, since Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year of 5773, begins at sundown on Wednesday.

For so many of us, the year begins in September.  Here in the Northeastern United States the weather starts getting crisper, the days shorter, and our clothes heavier.  I start thinking about sweaters and getting up in the dark and being indoors more often.

And teaching, and faculty meetings, and hours in front of the computer. 

Welcome back, everyone!

Summer!

Ah yes, a life geared to the academic calendar.

I survived the spring semester, my first teaching semester in four and one half years.  I forgot 1) how much work teaching is and 2) how much I love it (the work and the teaching).

And now the summer.  My "to do" list is incredibly long.  In addition to taking two courses towards my education to become a Commissioned Ruling Elder in the Presbyterian Church, USA (more about that here) I'm taking fiddle lessons AND I promised myself that this would be the summer that I finally got my website up.  So I'm taking a class from Tom Antion on-line that will teach me how to use Wordpress.

Oh, and I'm going to learn Evernote, and I'm taking Meggin McIntosh's Workshop Business 101 four month course to get myself set up to deliver workshops.

You should see the piles of books in my office at home.  In fact, you are seeing the piles of books. 

They are arranged into meaningful piles, but perhaps only for me.  There's the meditation pile, the workshop 101 pile, the CIS 101 pile (did I mention that another summer project is reworking our gen ed computing course, the one that every student has to take and hates?).

They are piled on the floor because there is no room in the bookcases, which leads me to another (perpetual) project which is to CLEAN UP THIS OFFICE!  Sorry, I didn't mean to shout.

Hope everyone is enjoying the summer-time to go back to whatever important thing it was that I was doing.

What does a professor do on sabbatical?

Well, I can only recount what this professor is doing on sabbatical.  The list is long and reflects things that suddenly arose, that were neglected, and things on my "someday-maybe list."

But the best of all is learning new things, practical things.  Developing my web site has been on my "someday-maybe" list for four years, ever since I took Meggin McIntosh's workshop "Make a Difference, Make Money, Teaching Teachers." So it's time to learn iWeb.

Learning how to use Evernote productively is also on the list.

Spending time actually reading all of my RSS feeds would be useful, as will pruning some of them back.

For the learning part, I'm experimenting with Grovo-can't remember how I first heard of Grovo, but so far the free classes have been very useful.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll actually get caught up on all that e-mail (or perhaps I'll just declare e-mail bankruptcy).

Sabbatical!

Sabbatical!  What a wonderful sound that word has, doesn't it?  The root is "sabbath" which literally means "ceasing."  And in this case, it means that I will cease being an interim dean, take a brief rest, and then go back and teach.

I have learned much during these last four years; I've learned to see the world through the eyes of others, I've learned to say "no" more frequently (but still not often enough), I've learned to be a bit more patient, and I've learned that I can't do everything myself.  I'm still not a great delegater but I've learned to delegate a little more.

Perhaps the strongest things that I've learned is that I am "called" to teach, that I miss teaching, that my work life is diminished without student interaction, and that I see teaching as a vocation.  Parker Palmer puts it so beautifully in The Courage to Teach
 

“If we want to grow as teachers -- we must do something alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other about our inner lives -- risky stuff in a profession that fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, the abstract.”
― Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life 

 

That might sound kind of abstract but even in teaching something as practical as database design I have learned that unless I am completely present the class doesn't "work" - I need to get into what

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a state of flow, that feeling of total absorption.  And in doing so I think/hope that I share something of myself, of my love for my material.

Somehow that doesn't happen when I'm in a meeting.

Verizon CIO Gets Leadership and Service in Technology Award

Verizon CIO Gets Leadership and Service in Technology Award 
Some times being the Interim Dean is a great job, and this was one of those times.
The video says it all!

Transitions

I'm hoping that I'm "short" as they say in the army.  The search committee is interviewing candidates for the job of Dean, Seidenberg School and I'm planning to be on sabbatical in the fall.  I'll return in Spring 2013 as a professor in the Westchester Information Technology Department.

There are days that I realize how much I will miss this job, and there are days when I realize that I miss teaching more.  I find the relationships with students very rewarding, more rewarding and nurturing than sitting in meetings.  I think my finest moments have been in the classroom, real or virtual, working with a community of learners, as we all learn something new, or see technology in a way we haven't seen it before. 

I put together a "vision board" a year ago, during a workshop with Peggy Cappy at Kripalu.  When I brought it home I found the collage that I did 11 years ago when I was on sabbatical and working through The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.  That collage has become my desktop picture; here it is:

My iMac Desktop: My Vision Board

Seeing this picture on my Mac each morning reminds me that there is more to life than meetings, or as the Gandhi quote that I have hanging on my bulletin board in my home office tells me, "there is more to life than increasing its speed."

As I look at what I'm planning to be the last four or five years of my work life, I know what I want it to have: fun!  I want to work with people who challenge me, support me and help me grow.  The best part of this job has been the deans with whom I've been privileged to work, colleagues who have done just that: challenged me, supported me and helped me to grow.

As my colleague Fran learned at the recent SunGuard Summit at a talk by Jane McGonigal, the opposite of play isn't work, it's depression.  I want to play at work and play at home.  I just want to play.  With a shout out to Cyndi Lauper, this girl just wants to have fun!

Stay tuned and let's see how this "plays" out.  The best case is someone new takes this job.  The worst case is that someone doesn't.

Happy Holidays!

Hard to believe but the semester is over and most of us have turned our thoughts to the holiday season.  I have always found this a perfect time to reflect on the past year and set an intention for the upcoming year.

I have been very influenced by Meg Wheatley, a scholar who has been applying systems theory to organizations.  I highly recommend her book, Perseverance.  In it, she helps to answer the question, what makes some people, even with failures and setbacks, keep doing work that they care about, that they feel is important.

I recommend it because all of us have failures, setbacks, disappointments and obstacles to overcome.  All of us.  And we need to learn to persevere, to "keep on keeping on."  Sometimes school is like that-I know it was for me when I returned at the age of 40 to begin working on my doctorate.  Sometimes work is like that-in the words of Jim Croce, "some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you."

We all just need to keep showing up, to remember that each day is a new beginning.

And so I wish for you and your families and your friends a peace-filled holiday break.  I look forward to seeing you all in the new year, a new beginning of a new semester.