Summer is over.
This last bit of summer was good. I got to go to the 2011 Leadership Summit, and it's been a while since I've been challenged in that sort of way. I've sort of forgotten how it is to sit back and try to take in these types of insights at that pace and in that environment. Michelle Rhee and Cory Booker were interesting political speakers. Steven Furtick gave a pretty entertaining sermon on digging ditches (2 Kings 3). There were others and I feel like I should have more to say, but I don't.
In my last week of summer, I was just getting the last bits of everything ready for the semester. The oversight role that I'm playing in the math remediation required me to have meetings with the PTIs (which I've never done before), but it's turned out to be great and a relatively easy thing to do. I'm surprised at how welcoming they are of direction. Maybe they're used to just being thrown into the middle of something and being forced to figure it out.
Nevada State College is now officially accredited on its own merits, which is a major step for a young institution. Here's an article from the local paper:
http://www.lvrj.com/news/accreditation-is-a-dream-come-true-for-nevada-state-college-127677508.html
Apparently, we came out so strong that we've got the attention of a few of the more established institutions in the commission. So we're all ready to keep pushing forward and making new territory on the educational landscape. I'm hoping that the remedial math program that we've been developing is a part of that.
My first day of classes went pretty well. Coming back after summer always leaves me a little hoarse because I usually don't spend 5 hours a day talking, especially with much of that talking at an elevated volume (classroom volume). I did mess up my first lecture video for Calculus 3. I didn't tell the computer to use the fast encoding method, which meant that I would have had to wait nearly 40 minutes to compress the video. It might have been okay if there were not another class immediately after mine. So that video ended up getting lost. But I fixed it before the afternoon class, and that was the more important class to me.
Getting the modules started wasn't very hard. All of the hard work happened well in advance of today, and the hard work that will happen will first appear on Friday when we try to coordinate a common exam in 5 different classrooms, and then try to make the grading happen in an efficient manner. That's really where I'm going to find out if I've got a good system, a great system, or a terrible system.
Things are church are starting to build up towards another small groups push. There's not a lot of information available yet, but there are events that are being planned, and various types of meetings have happened and will happen. So it's back to another wait-and-see time. I'm hoping to see the leadership of the church coalesce around a clear vision and a clear message, and that they are able to push the message in an effective manner. We've got a prayer meeting this week, and I'm looking forward to hear how they present things.
