Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Coming Down the Pike: Marmalade and More

by Rebel Girl

     25 years is a long time and Rebel Girl has seen a lot. Once, maybe five years into her stint at the little college in the orange groves, at an English department meeting where folks had gone on and on about the challenges in the classroom and how instructors were going to respond, Peter Morrison whispered to her, “You will be sitting in another meeting just like this one in twenty years.”
     He was right.
     In some ways that’s fine. We should always reflect on how better to meet the challenges of successfully teaching our students and meeting their needs. The students of 2017 are not the students of 1997 or even 2011. Challenges are somewhat the same but also different.
     Sometimes plans are developed on site, from our classrooms and our programs and sometimes they are imposed top down. Rebel Girl has seen a lot of this. Her advice when others have talked about their concerns with different initiatives – GAP 4, Early College, etc. and now Guided Pathways, is to explain that sometimes resistance is indeed somewhat futile. Take Assembly Bill 705 signed this week by Governor Brown. Our challenge now is to implement it the best we can to meet our students’ needs. We can do that. We must.
     Guided Pathways seems like that too. It’s coming down the pike, with a lot of money attached which makes the pike bigger, swifter and the prize at the end more shiny. The institution is already invested and yet many faculty aren’t buying, concerned, as ever about process and the role of faculty as well as unintended consequences. Also something about jam. Or was it jelly? Preserves? Chutney?
     Anyway, the imminent arrival of Meta-Majors have some folks worried, anxious. Especially those people who are finding themselves, under the proposed designations, teaching in areas that they themselves as instructor do not recognize. (Don't even get Rebel Girl started on how the use of "meta" in "Meta-Majors" is all wrong. All wrong.)  Other areas, these peeved porofessors point out, are privileged to actually have their disciplines in the newly proposed titles. Not so Rebel Girl, who is now assigned to “Culture, Languages and The Global Citizen.” What the hell? (And isn't "culture" plural like "languages" is? Where is the consistency? Are is this another problem regarding marmalade?)
     The Senate will be voting on a draft this week (tomorrow or today depending on when you are reading this) and some creative types (no doubt people who as students accrued some extra units in useless classes) have compiled some suggestions for revisions of the Meta-Majors.

Suggestions for Revisions:

[Draft term:] Meta-Majors 
[alternatives:] 
You Betcha Majors 
or 
Super Mega-Mech-A- Majors 
or 
Mo-Betta Majors

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) 
[alternatives:] 
Numbers and Machines  
or 
Lazers [sic], Coal, Fracking, & Calculating Profits 
or 
“Drones and Bombs"

Business, Economics, and Entrepreneurship  
[alternatives:] 
Money 
or 
PreTrump Studies

Culture, Languages, and the Global Citizen 
[alternatives:] 
Civilization  
or 
AntiTrump Studies 

Teaching, Law, and Public Service 
[alternatives:] 
Talking At People While Standing Up 
or 
Support or Challenge Trump Studies

Creativity, Arts, and Design 
[alternatives:] 
Colors, Sounds and Shapes 
or 
Graffiti and Questioning Mike Pence in your Audience Studies

Health and Wellness 
[alternatives:] 
Sweat and Vitamins 
or 
Profiteering from People's Misery Studies
Too many choices?
Guess so!

Undeclared  
[alternatives:] 
Chaos 
or 
Send Straight to Ministry of Love


 

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

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