Odd day, but alright. It rained most of the day, and everyone was feeling pretty lethargic. Joshua just walked in a second ago and said "what happened to your carpet?" It's getting more wrinkled. I don't know how they're going to fix this one; it looks pretty rough. Still. I persevere.
It started out pretty general, and I wasn't sure I'd get much out of it. Our presenter for today and tomorrow is the incoming president of NADE - Jane Neuburger. She seems pretty on top of things, and as the day progressed, she started giving out pretty practical nuts-and-bolts types of things that I think would work well.
Her big schema was that classroom environment plus excellence in instruction plus academic supports plus affective supports equals student success (which is more of a mouthful than comedy = tragedy + time, but it's still probably a truism of sorts). I think this formula stands to reason, really. I think the problem our institution is having is making sense of the whole. Even if we're all on the same page, the student isn't going to necessarily perceive it that way. For example, to have a professor work with the writing center and career services in order to help a student write a cover letter is a great thing, but not fully effective if the student views all three things as discrete functions. And I think we're sometimes discrete functions, and even when we're not, the students perceive the functions as discrete.
Regardless, she said: innovate, take risks, evaluate using data.
I'm interested to see what tomorrow brings. This is also the diversity week, and everyone is gearing up for the diversity discussion. Discussions on diversity are absolutely necessary and usually pretty painful to sit through. I'm curious to see how this one goes.
Not sure what to have for dinner. I had a waffle for breakfast. It was a big Belgian style waffle with the Appalachian "A" branded on it. Lunch was fake Subway.
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