Joyful Tidings #12: Our Portable Teaching and Learning Center, A Scholarscapes Teaser, and Monday’s Flexorama!

Flex Planner, Joyful Tidings

The professional development drama continues today with the new full-time faculty continuing their orientation process and attending a reception hosted by their lodestars. Simultaneously (I know, I know, it’s simply unbelievable…)  the Guided Pathways leadership team steps out with their first round of offerings (also available Wednesday afternoon), the Canvas team continues to strut their stuff, some colleagues share teaching strategies and experiences, and a variety of cool equity and student success workshops round out a sixteen session Flexorama of a day.

PDP Canopy Disaster

Introducing Our New PDP Portable Teaching and Learning Center
C3: Celebrate, Cultivate, Connect

All of these exciting professional development events — as amazing as they are — pale in comparison to the debut of our very own Portable Teaching and Learning Center! Please look for our canopy if you are on campus today and stop by for some joy:

  • You can browse through some old books and pamphlets you can have for free.
  • You can browse through some cool new (ok, some are kind of old…) books about teaching and learning you can borrow.
  • You can engage in lively conversation with colleagues or Jim Sullivan (when he is not running around campus impersonating a PDP coordinator) or Debby Adler (when she is not trying avoid being seen in public with Jim).
  • You can share your thoughts about teaching or learning on one of two easels with sticky pads awaiting your inspirational (or otherwise engaging) thoughts and ideas
  • You can help Jim Sullivan and Debby Adler practice the new PDP Flex Song (sung to the tune of Fly Me to the Moon). Or you can simply stand around and make fun of them while they practice.
  • You can grab a free bottle of chilled water (these will probably go fast)
  • You can celebrate, cultivate, connect, create in any joyous way you wish!

A Scholarscapes Teaser

In three days, on Thursday August 17 at 11 AM, three brave souls — Lynne Miller, Billy Gunn, and Sean Davis — will attempt something that no faculty members at this college have ever attempted — a feat of intellectual derring-do so bold, so mind blowing that I can only hint about it here. You may have heard the whispered rumors:
…scholarscapes …scholarscapes …scholarscapes…
but the dazzling reality is even more astonishing than the rumors.

The Chancellor’s Office has forbidden me to say more…for now…but our three courageous minds march day by day closer to their destiny…closer to a new dawning of the exploration of ideas for their own sake, for the love of the mind engaged, for the centrality of big ideas to the work of higher education…stay tuned…the journey begins…Thursday August 17 at 11 AM.

Monday’s Flexorama!

Here are the day’s offerings. You can sign up in myflex or throw caution to the wind and just show up and see what happens!