We have been moving forward with the math position interview process, meetings, teaching demos, area tours, and dinners. (The time loss also goes out to supporting other committees, such as giving campus tours and doing some general socializing with candidates.) It's been something like 15-20 hours of time in the last couple weeks. I can't say much about the math search except that I feel good about the candidates that we have, and I'm looking forward to having a discussion with the rest of the committee about how we are going to pick our favorite. The bottom line is that I think the future of our math program looks bright, and that there are definitely some possibilities for taking some unique and interesting steps in directions that we have not tried before.
I'm also on the committee working on the Faculty Grievance Policy, which is one of those policies that you write and hope you never have to use. I think it's a first step in really establishing a much better system for establishing policies. Even though I think policy discussion is a bit boring, I do appreciate that we're starting down the path of taking the policy creation process a bit more seriously and a bit more rigorously. I will openly admit the internal conflict I have between the annoyance of working carefully on policies and the recognition of its long term value.
I also lost several hours doing a Promotion and Tenure evaluation for an incoming faculty. This is another one of those things that leads me to a place of internal conflict. I recognize the importance of this process, but there are some parts of the process that I just find a little puzzling. Maybe it's just me, which would be perfectly acceptable. But maybe it's that there are parts of the process that maybe aren't the best or the most effective. I haven't had the opportunity to really sit down with it and flesh out everything, so it's going to have to be left hanging right about there. But there's some underlying sense of "this ought to be better" where "better" is some undefined future. I just need the time to think it through a bit more before I develop a more robust position on it.
We've also got Open House coming up this week. I thought that we would be all set with the materials we had last year, but then we realized that the materials do not reflect the changes that have happened in the last year. They still had information about our statistics concentration (that we needed to put on hold) and the business cards had old information (my old office, a faculty that left, and missing our new lecturer's business card). So we had to go through the documents anyway. I also created a math minor document that is starting the process of advertising our data science minor. Furthermore, I thought at first that I'd be able to just hang out at the math table all evening, but I was recruited to do some work with the telescopes on our observation deck because the people who normally do it aren't available at that time. But this means that I have to put in a little more extra time because I'm not exactly able to talk too much astronomy off the top of my head.
Fortunately, I think my classes are going well. The precalculus courses seem to have a little bit of a better buy-in and I'm getting a bit of a better interaction with them. I think being able to personally address students in the full problem write-ups is helping to close the gap a little bit. I do need to remember in the next problem or two to affirm the students that are doing well so that I'm not only talking negatively about the work they're doing. We've got our first exams coming up in a couple weeks, and I think that's where I'll really start to get a sense of how the class is doing. My MATH 127 students have slightly weaker quiz scores than what I hoped for. It doesn't show yet because I'm dropping some of their lower quiz scores and Canvas starts dropping them right away, but that reality will start to hit them pretty soon.
The 3D printing course seems to be rolling along. Their first major projects are due tomorrow. They needed to design a basic chess rook and another chess piece (or a more ornate chess rook). When I test ran this course a while ago, I was a little bit surprised at just how much they were able to do. So I'm hoping to be similarly surprised here.
The upper division courses seem fine. I need to find a way of spreading out the workload of the MATH 301 course just a little bit. I think it opens just a little bit heavy. One of the more time consuming parts are the pre-lecture videos. I've been using the videos by the author, but I think they're just a little bit slow and they don't quite emphasize things in quite the same way I do. But then that becomes yet another video project for me to think about, and I've got a bunch of those already. Not only that, I'm toying around with learning Blender to do some 2D animation stuff. I think it will go better than my current usage of Camtasia for animation. I don't know, though. I tried to learn Blender a while ago, and I found the learning curve to be quite steep and didn't really make good progress. But I'm willing to give it another run.
Work on the science center is coming along a bit. One of the guys that Dave works with helped me to connect to a chemist that is interested in helping us out, which is a nice injection of a little extra energy. I put out an update to the faculty for the first time in probably about 4 months. This had a link to the update for the medical trip as well as a rough sketch for the new science center room. I'm actually practicing a bit with the 3D modeling program that I'm using for the 3D printing course and trying to make a 3D mock up of it. I think that, in the end, it will make for a better presentation and better visualization of where things are going. But that's time being sucked up into yet another project.
I'm starting to go to a small group at church. I'm probably at least 5-7 years older than everyone in the group, so it may not be quite the right fit. But the other group I was in before (which I'm not even sure if it's still meeting) was all married couples with kids. So in both cases, I didn't quite fit in anyway. It's a lot more about building connections and relationships, and so I'll bridge those gaps as I come to them. Also, in a small church you don't have a lot of choice in the matter. But either way it's fine. The habit of community is important enough that I'll go ahead and put myself into those situations and just see where it goes.
I'm getting pretty comfortable playing bass at church where I'm starting to think about how I might continue to develop as a musician in this setting. I don't have a ton of time to play, but I'd like to start listening to more things with an intermediate level of bass playing. I think my previous background playing guitar and other instruments has let me get up to a solid beginner level pretty quickly. Interestingly, I think I'd like to learn more about playing a funk groove and really get into that type of playing. Does it fit in worship playing? I have no idea. But I don't think it matters. It will simply continue to grow my understanding of the instrument.
The Super Bowl was today, and I didn't roast a large animal. But I did roast several smaller things.
The next couple weeks look to continue at a similar level of busy, though there's some light at the end of the tunnel. I'm the chair of the campus wide grade appeal committee, so I get to do some background reading in preparation for a couple hearings. I've already mentioned open house. Leadership has another session this Friday in which I'm supposed to present a case to get the minimum sentence for a Felony DUI at a mock hearing. I'm thinking about applying for a NASA grant to build out the 3D printing on campus a bit more (but I might not do it if the money can't actually go into things that I'm wanting to get, like 3D printers). But after that, I think things ought to mellow out a bit and I can spend a little bit of time moving at a more leisurely pace before starting into one of the many projects I've got.
