Being a (Retired) Information Systems Professor?

Somehow that doesn't have much of a ring to it, does it?

But as of next Thursday, August 31, 2017, that's what I'll be--a retired information systems professor.

I have been working almost without a break since December 22, 1969. That was my first day as an actuarial trainee at The Home Insurance Company at 59 Maiden Lane (The company has since been liquidated).

I reflected on that first day in a keynote talk I gave at Pace University's Faculty Institute this past spring.

I am somewhat stunned to realize that I have taught at Pace for 32 years; I joined the faculty in January of 1985.

I've spent nearly 70% of my 47-year career at Pace. I've been a college professor twice as long as I was anything else.

Once a college professor, always a college professor, I guess.

So I'm not changing the name of this blog, I'll just keep on keeping on and see what happens next!

It's August.....already?

So here I am, on August 8, starting to plan for the new semester, which will be my last one as a full-time (well, full-time sort of, part-time/full-time) professor. Retirement, here I come! I met today with Rob Mundy, a professor of English and director of the Writing Enhanced Course program.  So I'm starting to think about syllabi, books, assignments, stuff like that.

Whiteboard class notes

And next week I'll be in my office, going through registrations and finding my way back.
So
I'm guessing that for me, in a way, summer is over. What about you?

What week is this? What day is this?

So now that the semester has begun, I teach a least one class each day, Monday through Thursday. The calendar this year has been very strange.
First, because Labor Day was so late we started classes on Wednesday, September 2. I can only remember starting classes before Labor Day once before (and I have no memory of what year it was, only that I was still a doctoral student, so we're talking late 90's).
Second, the first Monday was a Labor Day, so Monday classes met on Friday of the first week of school. Since I teach two classes that meet twice a week on Monday and Wednesday, the first week of school I taught Wednesday, Thursday (my regularly scheduled Thursday class) and Friday.
The week of Labor Day I taught on Tuesday (my regularly scheduled Tuesday class), Wednesday and Thursday. Okay, now let's go to the week of September 14, the week after Labor Day.  Monday was Rosh Hashanah and we didn't have classes. So I taught Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday again.  And that brings us to the week that just ended-Wednesday was Yom Kippur. So I taught Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.
Next week will be my first "normal" week. Although who even knows what "normal" is anymore?
What about you? How has your college/university adapted to a late Labor Day and (somewhat) early High Holidays?

A new semester begins!

Before Labor Day, no less. But we all got through it, my students are wonderful, and I'm glad to be back.
I'll be experimenting with Poll Everywhere and I'm pretty excited about that.
And I'm teaching three learning communities; two with a business course, same professor, and one with an economics course.
So it will be a busy semester, in this, the fall semester of my penultimate year of teaching.

Did someone say "snow day?"

It's not just the students who enjoy snow days-I am happy that the weather changed my plans today.
I was going to drive into the city to get my hair cut. 

Instead, I'll stay at home, finish marking the last of my final exams (given a week early so that we can use the time scheduled for the final for final project presentations) and put up the Christmas tree.

And the best part is that today is a "study day" which means that the snow hasn't interfered at all with classes or final exams, which is perfect.

Here's what my driveway looks like at 8:15 AM-and it's been snowing for about 45 minutes.
Looks like we might get the three inches Brysen Van Eck promised!

So, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

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.

Fall semester, already?

I have absolutely no idea where the summer went, that's for sure.

I worked, we went to Asheville, NC, I worked some more, we went to P'town and hurried back to avoid Irene, and I worked some more.

Oh, I see, I worked all summer, that's where it went!

How I miss the 16 weeks of vacation that I got as a faculty member!  Giving them up was one of the trade offs that I had to weigh when I agreed to serve as the (Interim) dean, but now as I begin year four (!) I find myself really wishing I had been able to take more vacation time.  I could use a complete rest, time away from the rat race, and as Lily Tomlin says, even if you win, you're still a rat!

But now it's the first day of class, and the race is on!

Good luck to all of us, students, teachers, parents.

A New Year, a New Post

Hard for me to believe that it is 2011, but it is. And I've been thinking alot about what we need to be discussing in classrooms.

Yesterday I spent some time with my friend, Deb, who runs an excellent Internet marketing company (you can find more information about her firm here). We wound up talking about Chris Anderson's article in the August issue of Wired, The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet. How can you predict the "next big thing?" Will it really be apps? Deb contends that Facebook is over; what's next?

And how does that affect our curricula?

Things to ponder....

I'm back-reading Program or Be Programmed

I have a new blog-you can find it here.

I'm still serving as the Interim Dean, so that's why I've got the Dean's blog, but at heart I'm still an Information Systems Professor, so I'll keep this one, too.

And it's an exciting time to be an IS/IT professor. The field is changing, our courses are changing, and the definition of Information Technology is changing. Our students know more about some specific things than we do, but less about the overall field than we do-and that is a problem. One of my colleagues, Joe, sent me a "must read" note about a book, Program or Be Programmed, by Douglas Rushkoff-you can watch a video here. Rushkoff gives me pause.

Why is this different from, say, just getting in my car and driving? Well, for one thing, I usually steer when I drive. Many of the applications we use on the web "steer" us. I'll end with this thought. Rushoff's "ten commandments" are important-here's a snipppet from a review in The Miami Herald:

The author’s Decalogue here is a set of rules of conduct. To wit: Do Not Be ‘Always On;’ Live in Person; You May Always Choose ‘None of the Above;’ You Are Never Completely Right; One Size Does Not Fit All; Be Yourself; Do Not Sell Your Friends; Tell the Truth; Share, Don’t Steal; and Program or Be Programmed.” Each of the command(ments) comprise a chapter.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/22/1936739/be-a-driver-or-a-passenger.html#ixzz16USZ3nCx

Being an Interim Dean?

I've been named Interim Dean, effective July 1 (although I jumped right in and am "deaning" now). Should I change the name of this blog? No, I'll just start a new one- The Dean's Diary (http://seidenbergdean.blogspot.com Every Friday I'll post what I did for the week and where I'll be.
Should be interesting-I never thought I'd be dean, never really planned for it but it feels like this is what I was mean to do-isn't that weird?

Graduation!

This is what I've been looking at ALL DAY! Cleaning up e-mail, marking papers, posting grades.

The semester is over and now I can look forward to arguing with students about their papers and working on plans for the Doctor of Professional Studies program.

Oh, and maybe being interim Dean-that will be different!

I love it when people ask what I do all summer. This summer will be no different from earlier summers. I'll work like a dog trying to "catch up" only to realize that I can never catch up. Oh well, I should know better but "hope springs eternal."

My two computers

My two computers,
originally uploaded by caknappprof.

Doesn't everyone have two computers? My trusty go-everywhere-with-me laptop and my favorite iMac? It's hard to believe that when I started working at Pace, back in the "dark ages" I didn't have a computer-I had a terminal that allowed me to connect to the mainframe to read my mail, such as it was!

If anyone had explained to me that I'd have a laptop that went everywhere with me, a cell phone that fit in my pocket and that I had to be careful not to lose, and a PDA that would keep track of all of my phone numbers, passwords and to-do lists, I would have wondered what drugs that person was taking!

I can't remember the last time I held a piece of chalk!

My Office in Pleasantville

My Office in Pleasantville,
originally uploaded by caknappprof.

I've been working on a project, part of which has me taking photos of my work place and home. This is what my bulletin board looks like-maybe I should clean some of that junk off!

On the other hand, what would I do with a clean bulletin board, or a clean desk for that matter!

Dissertations!

I've just come from the doctoral dissertation defense of a former Master's student of mine, Tom. Way to go, Tom! But why did you have to remind me that I had you as a student 15 years ago!

Dissertation defenses are nerve wracking events, I believe, for everyone. This was my fourth as a committee member (Doug and Bucky in the Lubin School of Business, and Joe and Darren in the Seidenberg School). The next one that I sit through I'll be the advisor (Nora) so perhaps it will be less nerve wracking. I'm reading Seth Godin's book The Big Dip (you can learn more about Seth Godin here: Seth Godin's blog. I realize now that writing and defending the dissertation is "the big dip" that separates the ADBs from the PhDs.