My Fall Plans

As I mentioned earlier, I am taking a leave from PCCC in the Fall semester. I mentioned earlier that I wanted to recharge. However, that doesn't mean I am going to do nothing with my time.

One thing students do not always get to see is how active some professors are outside the classroom. I know it took me three years at Montclair State to figure out that my professors actually had other obligations besides teaching and office hours and course development. I guess it just never crossed my mind that all sorts of things need attending to.

For example, who approves changes to courses and programs? There should be some sort of process where other people in the college can discuss proposed changes. One of my duties has been to prepare some of our curriculum changes, filling out the appropriate paperwork, and getting my department on board. This also involved presenting the changes to our Curriculum Committee (ably chaired by another member of my department, Professor Bamkole). If there were changes suggested by that committee, I would then incorporate them. I would need to present them again at the Academic Council - this is the entire College community. Again, people could make suggestions and I would need to incorporate them. Any small change to a course required at least three meetings and a number of possible revisions. In other words, rewriting a course description might take 30 minutes to rewrite and then 5 hours to document, present, revise, re-present, and revise.

Point being, there are a lot of responsibilities of being a full-time faculty member that are not necessarily obvious. I wanted to update you on my fall plans.

First of all, I will be teaching two classes at Bergen Community College. I am scheduled to teach INF-101-004 (similar to PCCC's CIS 101) and INF-163-001 (similar to PCCC's CIS 152 class, but with more technology and less business. The courses both meet in the late afternoon, which is interesting, since we generally have problems filling classes in those time slots at PCCC. Bergen does things a little differently, so I am working on getting fluent in their WebCT/Blackboard system, as well as learning the INF-101 textbook. It's a book that is taking a really interesting approach to things, and I look forward to trying it out.

I am also working on a few side projects.

I am working on doing some of the supplements for a new edition of the Exploring Access 2010 textbook (test bank questions, etc). I am also working on a manuscript for an Office textbook.

I also will be doing some work with teachers and possibly students through the PRISM program at Montclair.

Should be an interesting semester, to say the least.