Worky work.
- I made a mistake in reading an email from 2005, that is the rules for accepting ASL as the second language requirement for our BA degrees. Since I started this job, I thought that, just like all the other languages students take in high school, if students have ASL from grade 11, that suffices for our BA framework. It turns out I was wrong; if you read the email paragraph that comes before the chart of ASL courses, it says ASL 12 is what's required. The graduation officer told the student she can't graduate, without passing that by the advisors first, then looked at our notes and saw that we said it was fine. The student has made an appointment with me for next week, so I have some time to fix this. Luckily for me, my other advisor had the same impression, and it doesn't exactly make sense for that one language to require grade 12 completion instead of grade 11, and our associate dean has approved the grade 11 before. Bleh. Two action points: 1. let the student graduate. 2. Fix either the accepted ASL level, or how the BA framework states the second language requirement.
- We're in the process of hiring a par-time advisor, and by part-time I mean .4 of a position. That's weird. There are a number of problems with this: they need to overlap with us for training, and then the administration wants them to work evenings, when the office is closed, no other advisors are there, no other support offices are open. This just doesn't seem like a good idea to me, but I said "yes, we do need evening advising." However, couldn't my other advisor, who has some experience and connections, try to take evening hours, and let the new person take some daytime? Also, where the heck is this person going to *sit*? We don't have an empty room that I'm aware. This wasn't thought through entirely - we fought for an advisor, but now it's going through quite quickly, it seems.
-- Also, there are three internal candidates, and our union says we have to consider them first before moving on to the external candidates, and by consider it means also interview if they fit the requirements. I'm recommending 1 out of the 3 to be interviewed. At least he has about 6 months of something advising-related, looking in detail at different Arts degrees. One of the other candidates has incredibly no related experience, and the second one has a whiff of possibility, but everyone has a bad vibe about that person, and there are strong reasons why they don't fit the requirements either. We (the interview committee) will talk it through tomorrow morning, since we have interview time reserved for next Friday. Ugh.
- I've fielded a bunch of tasks given to me by both of our associate deans via email, tasks that were basically "do this now but not if you're with a student, just do it as soon as possible and get back to me." They all involved looking at the waitlists for classes and seeing if the students on the waitlists are supposed to be in the classes, based on number of credits completed and declared program, and therefore looking at who is *in* the class to see if they are supposed to be there, too. This involved a lot of repetitive finding of info for 40-50 students per roster, for about 6 classes. Luckily, I found some playlists on youtube to get me through: Dream of the Blue Turtles by Sting and Rhythym of the Saints by Paul Simon. That helped the time pass less stressfully.
- My coworker and I worked on our yearly plan of advising activities. It looks good, looks like a lot of work IMO. We have some weeks designated where we can add workshops, which is one thing we're lacking that we'd like to add. We're going to discuss with our bosses (we have a number of bosses) all the things we're doing and how to communicate them to all parties, and get buy-in from the departments. I didn't look at how the Jewish holidays will mesh with our plans... but I'm not the only advisor, so that's not going to shoot any initiative in the foot.
So many students, so many emails, screening appointments, taking phone calls and drop-in questions, it all makes the days busy and time fly. Today I got light-headed walking around at 11:45, and realized I probably hadn't eaten enough/correctly, and also had no water, so had an early lunch. I can't manage quite everything in a day, but I try.
This entry was originally posted at http://avivasedai.dreamwidth.org/644628.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
- We're in the process of hiring a par-time advisor, and by part-time I mean .4 of a position. That's weird. There are a number of problems with this: they need to overlap with us for training, and then the administration wants them to work evenings, when the office is closed, no other advisors are there, no other support offices are open. This just doesn't seem like a good idea to me, but I said "yes, we do need evening advising." However, couldn't my other advisor, who has some experience and connections, try to take evening hours, and let the new person take some daytime? Also, where the heck is this person going to *sit*? We don't have an empty room that I'm aware. This wasn't thought through entirely - we fought for an advisor, but now it's going through quite quickly, it seems.
-- Also, there are three internal candidates, and our union says we have to consider them first before moving on to the external candidates, and by consider it means also interview if they fit the requirements. I'm recommending 1 out of the 3 to be interviewed. At least he has about 6 months of something advising-related, looking in detail at different Arts degrees. One of the other candidates has incredibly no related experience, and the second one has a whiff of possibility, but everyone has a bad vibe about that person, and there are strong reasons why they don't fit the requirements either. We (the interview committee) will talk it through tomorrow morning, since we have interview time reserved for next Friday. Ugh.
- I've fielded a bunch of tasks given to me by both of our associate deans via email, tasks that were basically "do this now but not if you're with a student, just do it as soon as possible and get back to me." They all involved looking at the waitlists for classes and seeing if the students on the waitlists are supposed to be in the classes, based on number of credits completed and declared program, and therefore looking at who is *in* the class to see if they are supposed to be there, too. This involved a lot of repetitive finding of info for 40-50 students per roster, for about 6 classes. Luckily, I found some playlists on youtube to get me through: Dream of the Blue Turtles by Sting and Rhythym of the Saints by Paul Simon. That helped the time pass less stressfully.
- My coworker and I worked on our yearly plan of advising activities. It looks good, looks like a lot of work IMO. We have some weeks designated where we can add workshops, which is one thing we're lacking that we'd like to add. We're going to discuss with our bosses (we have a number of bosses) all the things we're doing and how to communicate them to all parties, and get buy-in from the departments. I didn't look at how the Jewish holidays will mesh with our plans... but I'm not the only advisor, so that's not going to shoot any initiative in the foot.
So many students, so many emails, screening appointments, taking phone calls and drop-in questions, it all makes the days busy and time fly. Today I got light-headed walking around at 11:45, and realized I probably hadn't eaten enough/correctly, and also had no water, so had an early lunch. I can't manage quite everything in a day, but I try.
This entry was originally posted at http://avivasedai.dreamwidth.org/644628.html. Please comment there using OpenID.