I finally got to meet up with someone at DRI to get a look at their Green Boxes program. We were actually supposed to meet about two weeks ago, but the staff member we were supposed to meet with had some family issues, which created a delay. And what was supposed to be a nice casual meeting got turned into a 20 minute blitz meeting because the DRI President called in the faculty for some sort of meeting at the last minute. And there really wasn't a window of time to push it back because that faculty member was transferring up to Reno later that week. So we had to just do it. The purpose of the meeting was to help me get a feel for how they run the program so that I can try to take some of the ideas and transfer them to the Oaxaca Science Inspiration and Discovery Center project. Fortunately, I got enough information that I feel pretty comfortable with how to think about such educational kits.
We had a number of student, faculty, and facility issues to work through as well. We had one student that went through all of the right steps to do a late enrollment into a class (talk with the instructor in advance, stay in communication), but as soon as the student got into the class, he just disappeared. He didn't show up to class, and didn't contact the instructor anymore. There's a weird backstory that I don't have all the details on, but apparently the student was also a doctor somewhere (which begs the question of why this student is taking undergraduate level biology courses). So I don't even know what's going on there, and I don't really care because I think we successfully reversed the petition (at least, I submitted a query about it and haven't heard back that it wasn't possible).
We also lost an instructor because we discovered through the standard HR practices that she never received approval from her supervisor to teach for us. That one came down over the course of just a couple hours. I got a call from HR in the morning warning me that it might happen, and then a little while later got an email that it was official. Normally, we'd have a few instructors that we could contact and reasonably expect to fill the class for us, but they've all got reasons for being unavailable, like having a full time job, being out of state, being at their maximum employment level, and being 8 months pregnant. As a shot in the dark, I emailed a guy who taught for us a couple years ago but had left town, and fortunately he happened to have returned just a couple weeks ago, which ended up working out perfectly. But that was another panic situation that had to be dealt with.
Late last week, I had some students come to my office to raise some concerns about an instructor, and that one is still ongoing. After having a few conversations, I'm worried at a personal level for this (part time) instructor because there's a significant difference in behaviors from a year ago. I'm hoping that some follow-up with the instructor will help to clear out some of the classroom troubles, because it's the sort of situation that I can see things running of the rails very quickly if it's not handled well.
We also had to request about $5000 in emergency equipment funds because our Thermocycler broke. What's a Thermocycler? According to Wikipedia, it's "a laboratory apparatus most commonly used to amplify segments of DNA via the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)." I have no idea what that means, but the faculty said it's important. The one we had is so old that it's not supported anymore, and it would have been about $3000 to get someone out to try to service it (with no guarantee that it would actually be fixed), but we were able to argue for the extra couple thousand to do the full replacement. So at this point, I can just leave it in the hands of the appropriate faculty and staff and they'll take care of it.
I found out that there was going to be a high school counselor presentation, and that this year each department was going to need to make a 20-minute presentation to help sell our programs. The goal here is to convince the counselors that we have an exciting program so that they would tell their students that we have exciting programs. So I spent several hours pulling together photos and statements from faculty in order to make a solid presentation. But on the morning of the day it was supposed to happen, I found out that the whole structure got changed and I wasn't needed anymore. On the one hand, I was glad because I didn't really want to do it, but I was also disappointed because I put time and effort into making something that turned out to be a complete waste of my time.
I got through the final details of the "Not 'Not a Math Person'" project. I had a couple students and another faculty helping me with that one, which helped it to go more smoothly. The website got to the 100% complete stage: http://notnotamathperson.weebly.com/. We also designed and ordered business cards to go with the project:
Another thing that happened was that one of my 8 AM math instructors got stuck in traffic. I got the phone call just as I was getting into the office, and he said he spent 40 minutes going about two miles. (I found out later that morning that there were at least two other faculty/staff stuck in the same mess. Amusingly, the admin was stuck in it and happened to stuck next to one of our instructors.) Fortunately, it was a remedial level math class, and I was able to slide right in and teach the class (I literally wrote the book for that class). The instructor eventually made it in about 40 minutes after class began, and I was able to hand it off to him. I got a call in my office an hour later and discovered that one of the other remedial math instructors didn't even show up, but that was because she had a medical episode and was in the hospital (her brother called it in). Fortunately, it was something where she just needed to get on the right medication to bring things back to normal, and she called me that afternoon to say that she'd be back the next day.
And those were just the unusual things that happened. I still had the usual run of things to deal with on the day-to-day basis, like meetings, planning, signing forms, and responding to the various emails.
This last Friday, I had a meeting with Dave and the faculty regarding the Oaxaca Science Inspiration and Discovery Center. (OSIaDC? I need a better acronym.) This was the first time that I've had everyone together in the same room to talk about things. I think the faculty were on board conceptually and there seemed to be a general willingness to pitch in. The main goal coming out of that meeting is for me to put together a list of the equipment and other specialty items that would be needed to set up a good science lab. This is part of helping to get a real dollar estimate on the project so that Dave can begin the fundraising with a clear goal in mind. It will also help to establish the structures in which the curriculum will be created. We also established the general parameters inside of which the curriculum will be organized: Biology (health sciences and general biology), Earth Science (including things like Ecology, Meteorology, and Astronomy), Physics, and Chemistry. We're still aiming at a 9-month curriculum which meets twice a month, and I've laid out a schedule that could possibly have things up and running by Fall 2017 if everything goes absolutely perfectly. We'll just have to see how things play out. Dave is heading out there to talk with some folks in a few weeks, and if everything goes well there, that will result in a big momentum boost for us. I think that being able to see the room we'll be using and being able to draw out a floor plan will start to make it feel really real.
I've taken the next step with the office/study. I've got myself set up where I'm actually using it again. In the last few years, I'd be on my laptop in front of the TV in the living room, but aside from that leaving me somewhat hunched over, it made me very lethargic with both the TV and laptop running, and I probably spent more time idling than I'd like to admit because it's so easy to just zone out there bouncing back and forth between the two media sources. So moving my primary computer usage to a different room will hopefully shift up those habits a bit. Here's my new computer corner:
The church search is really starting to settle down now. I had a chance to have a one-on-one conversation with the lead pastor, and I like his humility and perspective. I'm still going to ride out the remainder of the vision sermon series before making any final decisions, but based on what I'm seeing so far, this is definitely something I can get behind. This also would mean I would need to start connecting socially to the church through small groups at some point, but I don't feel like this is the right time for that. I might wait until the start of the next calendar year before really taking that step.
Other random notes:
- This weekend, I was also on a random cooking binge. I happened to see beef marrow on sale in the meat section (roasted it at 450 degrees for about 15 minutes with just some salt, served with ciabatta crostini that was brushed with the marrow fat, toasted, and rubbed with garlic). I ate about half a loaf of bread and maybe about 3-4 servings of it for lunch. There was still a 1lot of marrow fat leftover, so I basically just fried the second half of the ciabatta in it to make croutons, which I ate with some onion soup.
- Went to Raku Japanese grill for the first time. It was all very tasty. We had the house-made tofu, which was good, but I have no idea what the big deal about it was. Maybe my palate just isn't sophisticated enough for subtle Japanese cuisine. It was good tofu, but it was just tofu. Also, the shave ice place nearby was quite tasty.
- I went to a show last week Friday night. I was completely unaware of the Super Summer Theater venue before this. It's basically out in the middle of nowhere in Red Rock, but it's a very lovely location and the show (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) was quite fun. I happened to run into a former colleague and his wife, and also got to meet one of the performers. Although I've done tech for shows at church, it actually brought back memories of being in the pit orchestra in high school.
